It’s February my friends which means warm weather, good eats at the Rotary’s Annual Fish Bowl, I’m late working on my base tan, Super Bowl fun, and time to start prepping for spring break headspace – it is a thing for us full-timers! Oh yeah, and Happy Valentine’s Day. Here in Mexico, we celebrate love and friendship, which is obviously much better 😊 so, “Feliz dia del Amor y Amistad”. Hope everyone has a lovely special day and a fantastic month.
I guess we’ll start off with the biggest news from last month, which was that our Mayor, Dr. Castro resigned due to health reasons. Joseph Sanchez wrote about it in his article this month so you can go read that for all the deets. Not to worry, we do have a new Mayor, Alejandro Verdugo Angulo, so we would like to wish him well and we look forward to some positive forward momentum.
We have some more big news from last month, but as of this writing I don’t have all of the details because it hasn’t happened yet. At the end of last month Encantame Resorts was hosting a star-studded Red Carpet Event featuring Filmaker, Phillip Penza of Little Books Little Films (www.lblf.net) who has filmed some of his movies here in Puerto Peñasco (and Ajo too). And on the appearance roster was Lorenzo Lamas, Terrell Matheny, Eric Roberts, Timothy Goodwin, Ochotorena, Eliza Roberts, and Audrey Beth to name a few. Like I said, it hasn’t happened yet so I can’t do it justice but I’m expecting it to be a blast. I know a ton of people will be showing up and there will be a movie screening as well as autograph and photograph opportunities and no telling what else. Full report and lots of photos next month. For now, you can catch Phillip Penza’s movies by visiting the website above and on Prime Video, Roku and Tubi. Watching 85 to Ajo was fun because people I know kept showing up on screen and I recognized where the scenes were filmed – and there’s also some Peñasco shots. Hopefully you RSVP’d and we’ll see you there!
I try not to send people to the cesspool that is social media – unless it’s to The Rocky Point Times Page (lol) – but there is a pretty neat site that came up in my feed today, which is usually just filled with funny Great Dane videos and 4×4 trucks doing their thang: Peñasco del Ayer is the site and it’s postings of old photos of Puerto Peñasco and people some of which date way, way back. It’s a fun bit of nostalgia. I need to go through my thousands of old photos and then go take a current photo of the same location and post them side by side. I don’t know if that would be any fun for newbies, but I would enjoy it 😊 The old photos of Costa Brava, which used to be in the Old Port made me think of the Valentine’s Day lunches that our late, great Editor, Tom O’Hare used to treat us “office gals” to every year. He’d have the table decorated and flowers, gifts and cards for everyone and Leonardo and Pedro standing by to serenade us. I think just about every one of those lunches went straight past dinner and right into bar hopping. We’d start at Costa Brava (and some years at Puesta del Sol, La Casa del Capitan, Maria Bonita or the Friendly Dolphin) and end up over at the Señorial, Hotel Villa Granada or Mr. Amigos – those are just some of the ones that my fading memory can remember. Don’t get me wrong – we ended up at Manny’s Beach Club, the Pink Cadillac, Sunset Cantina, Pitaya and Callejon too, but I think those were just after regular lunches – ahhh, good times. I sure do miss the parents and hopefully they are having a lovely Valentine’s Day together wherever they are
A friendly reminder for night drivers now that traffic is picking up and it’s getting dark sooner…if you drive with your brights on, NO ONE CAN SEE! Captain Obvious knows this as do all of you intelligent people who read this paper every month, but apparently there are a lot of people out there that don’t. The newer headlights are VERY bright – I get it – they are bright for EVERYONE! Sometimes it is hard to tell if a driver hasn’t dimmed their lights so a flick of your high beams should do the trick. Yes, there are a few that will refuse to dim their lights and to those people I say – please drive during the day because you are a hazard! The Arizona highways coming to/from the border are dark and narrow with little or no shoulder and Hwy. 8 to Peñasco has its own set of challenges like potholes, slow vehicles, the occasional cow and vehicles with one headlight, no headlights or only their high beams. I have no idea what possesses drivers to nail oncoming vehicles with their high beams when they haven’t even given the courtesy of a flick. It is so dangerous – and annoying. If you’re new to visiting Peñasco or maybe even the southwest, please know that we attract a lot of big trucks. We have awesome places to 4×4 and a lot of people tow their camping and toy trailers and toys with said big trucks so if you have trouble with bright lights, please don’t drive at night. Our border closes at 8PM, 7 days a week, so please plan accordingly. Thank you and you’re welcome.
Well, the world is a little crazy, but Puerto Peñasco is still chill so please come visit and destress – the shrimp are delish, the people are nice, we have beaches, the ocean is beautiful, and I can still find a cold, cheap beer when I want to!
