Guaymas

We have had a few delays in our vacation plans so far. We tried to leave Wednesday night but there had just been a snowstorm in the mountain pass that our bus was supposed to go through so we had to wait until Thursday evening to leave. We left at 11:30 pm and were supposed to be in Hermosillo in 10 hours but because of the snow it took an extra five or six hours. We took another bus to Guaymas and settled into our hotel room a couple of hours later. We tried to catch a ferry but there were none running because of the weather. We were told that these strong winter winds could last for days. We have found a beach that is unbelievably free of tourists. For hours each day, we have had the beach to ourselves. We get to it on the local city bus, which only costs 8 pesos for all of us. It is busy in the summer with the locals but right now the locals are wearing their winter clothes. We might just stay here and not go to tourist-ridden Mazatlan after all. The weather is beautiful. The coldest it gets here, even at night, is about 18 degrees above zero. The days since we have arrived in Guaymas have sort of blended together and I didn't even realize that it was Christmas Eve until I started hearing all the fireworks. We actually thought it was Saturday the 23rd when really it was Sunday the 24th. Learning that it was Christmas Eve (although we still didn't realize it was Sunday until we tried to go to church the next morning and were told that it was then Monday), we got kind of excited and ventured out to the main street to buy fireworks from vendors that had set up tables and booths for this occasion. Back at our hotel, a group of local kids noticed the fireworks we were carrying and gathered around to help us set them off.