La Penita

Harvey picked us up promptly at 9:30 am and we all rode away on a 40-mnute trip to La Penita. Much of the highway is through jungle, as shown below, and occasionally bypasses a soberingly steep precipice.

 

Our first stop on arriving was up a steep hill to take in an overview of this town of 20,000 souls ...

There are five Spanish congregations here and one English which a while ago was downsized into a Group, then not long afterward upgraded to a congregation again. The local Kingdom Hall is shown below. According to Harvey we'll be attending the meeting here on Sunday.

We stopped to visit with Witnesses in the English congregation and they kindly provided us a lunch.

David (far left) is an elder from Ontario. His wife, Natasha (4th from left), is also a native of Ontario. They are fairly recent arrivals and came here following a response they received from a letter to the Branch inquiring where a need was for English-speakers in Mexico.

The town itself looks pleasantly clean, neat, and calm. Although there is a tourist presence here it is much less pervasive than in Bucerias, at least so far. I suspect Harvey might like it if we were to fall in love with La Penita. We are looking forward to the Sunday meeting there.

After returning to Bucerias we went to the beach to watch the sunset. It's afterglow on the clouds made the most interesting photo in my humble opinion.

Then we went to Tacos Linda's for supper. We had heard they open only at 7:00 pm and thought we were early at 6:45 pm. But they were already filling up. First I took Carol's photo out front ...

Then we entered and obtained the last available table. Tacos Linda's enjoys a reputation for exquisitely delicious tacos and I wondered how the experience would measure up. They scored huge. Our food was amazing and the chicken taco in particular nearly sent me spiraling into mid-heaven. I was astounded that something as basically simple as a chicken taco could stir the taste buds, and the heart, as memorably as that. Congratulations, Tacos Linda's!

By the way, that photo of Carol was snapped in the nick of time. Other people were arriving. They filled the bench, they stood in line, they crowded around, a truck arrived off-loading ten passengers, drooling children climbed the chain-link fence on the store front, people with their hunger pangs etched on their faces craned their necks to see if any diners were nearly finished. Those who couldn't wait ordered take out. Diners who could eat no more for the moment ordered take out. Great tacos!