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the crowds are rolling into sayulita for semana santa, the two week spring break involving crazy amounts of people getting rowdy in the beach. it seems as if every person in mexico descends upon every inch of coastline available. our beach is no exception, and i do have memories of junst hunkering down the last time we were here during this time. you just have to wait for the storm to pass. brenda has managed to escape to san francisco for the week to help kiki out with the twins while nayou and i hold down the fort here.

we kicked off semana santa in style with an amazing birthday fiesta right on our street. jose, who lives directly across the road from us, turned three yesterday and there was a big party thrown for him. i have noticed that the mexicans do go to extremes when it comes to kids’ birthdays. but this one definitely took things to a whole new level. check this out – they commandeered the entire street! my favourite is the ballon archway at the entrance of our street.

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you can see the bouncy castle. that was a big hit – nayou spent about half an hour jumping like crazy in there!

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this is the birthday boy with one of the six pinatas that were brought out:

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have a look at some of the video 🙂

 

this is going to be another post of bits and pieces. its easy to leave the camera behind these days when you leave the house with a surfboard, a boogie board and a myriad other things. but now that brenda is taking her ipod touch out and about we have many more photos of the goings on. first off, a couple of shots from our other home, the beach.

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my friend nick, whom i met at a yoga class, turned out to be an acroyogi and so he showed me some moves on the sand. he’s going to do a workshop at the end of march so we’re going to put a routine together to demo to the participants. its super fun stuff, but strong!

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and speaking of yoga, here is one of the studios where i teach. its a beautiful, calm space. love it!

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brenda and nayou took a fishing lesson from our friend jorge earlier this week. they just fished from the beach, learning about the rods, tackle and other fishy stuff. brenda managed to catch a snook (love the name), which apparently is a very wily difficult fish to catch. check out how big it is!

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ever wondered what nayou would look like as a rasta? wonder no more.

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nothing like some ice cream on a hot sunny day.

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to finish off, here is some video taken fresh today of nayou explaining how one of this lego creations work. enjoy!

house? pretty much check. car? check. surfboard? check. now that the holy trinity is more or less sorted, we have finally started (resumed?) our lives as beach bums. we haven’t done much work on the house at all, but we sure have been doing some serious work on our tans. the surf has been small to non-existent so instead we have been lounging around and catching some waves on our boogie board instead. actually, nayou has been doing most of the catching. brenda and i have been doing the ooh-ing and aah-ing. we finally captured some of the boogie magic on video to share with the world in all its glory:

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there was also an unfortunate incident with my board shorts which nayou dutifully immortalised with his digital camera.

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in other news, we’ve started the sweet/sad friendship cycle of the transient wanderers with two really cool ladies from england – lucy and liz. we met them a couple of weeks ago and have been doing lots of hanging out since. they are leaving next week which is super sad, but it sure has been nice having partners in crime! oh, and nayou took this photo:

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so yes, its good to be back in hardcore chill mode. the days are already all melding together, and i have trouble remembering what day of the week it is lately 🙂

 

its hard to think that we’ve already been in sayulita for three weeks already! in many ways it feels like our time here is just starting now. our first week was a bit stressful because there was a mix up with our accommodation. originally we had secured a place for a month through a friend of ours. he was moving out of his place so we were taking over. our friend had told his landlord manuel that a couple with a young child would be moving in. through just sheer coincidence, the day before we arrived another young couple with a child spoke with manuel and paid a deposit to rent his place for a few months. of course manuel thought the couple was us, so he promised it to them. so when we arrived, all travel weary and ready to relax, we found that we needed to find another place to live within a week. oops.

at least for that first week we were able to enjoy an outdoor kitchen and dining room 🙂

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of course as luck would have it february is the busiest month in sayulita so finding accommodation is not an easy task. we got our hustle on the mexican way and drove around asking people if they knew of any places that were available. we managed to find a couple of leads but nothing really jumped out at us. this was even after raising the amount of rent we were willing to pay by a considerable margin. the good news was that at least we weren’t going to be homeless. the bad news would be that we would have to live in a sub-par place for a month and then move again in march.

six days before we had to move out, manuel spoke with us and told us that he owned the house across the street from where we were staying. he offered to show it to us so of course we said yes. he took us across the road and my instant reaction was “uh uh, no way”. while the place definitely had potential, it hadn’t been lived in for over a year and needed a lot of work. still, both brenda and i thought it could be a nice two bedroom with some work. plus it had a big garden out the back which was cool too. manuel knew it was a ramshackle place and offered to rent it to us for very cheap.

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after we saw the house we went to play at the beach. we were discussing our various housing options and brenda hit upon the bright idea of offering to fix up manuel’s house in exchange for rent. initially i was against it but after thinking about the fun things we could do with the place the idea slowly grew on me. when we floated to idea to manuel he was all for it. so over those next six days we had the painters, the carpenters, the plumbers and the electricians in, plus the telmex people to hook up internet. it was nothing short of a miracle to see all of these people come in and get their jobs done in such a short amount of time! not only that but we got ourselves a king size mattress delivered the day we moved in! i’m still on awe over how much sleeping space we have. its so luxurious!

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so our days since we moved into the house has usually consisted of some beach time followed by some serious home improvement time. we’ve become very familiar with the layout of our closest home depot and also made many trips to (and i hate to say it) walmart and costco to get the essentials. its been a LOT of work, but also super fun. and the best part is that the house is starting to look really homey 🙂

here is our messy kitchen. hopefully it won’t be this was for much longer!

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we had a custom wood base made for a day bed we’re putting in. we painted it ourselves and are currently in the process of getting the top cushion made for us. i can’t wait until we can chillax properly on this thing. its going to be so awesome!

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there has been a fair amount of this going on. nayou has been a good help (when he wants to be) with all of this.

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this is the current state of our bedroom. brenda put some curtains in and it really made the whole room so much cosier.

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in between all of this madness we have also managed to get some other things done too! i’ve started teaching yoga twice a week at paraiso yoga and brenda has started a green juice bar at the weekly farmers market. the market used to be this half-assed thing when we were here before but now its a big proper event with lots of amazing stalls. last friday was her second time doing it and she has already been chosen as the star stall in the market’s newsletter!

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we’ve been going to the beach every day. nayou is an absolute rockstar in the ocean, jumping over and around waves like nobody’s business. i bought him a boogie board the other day and he has been catching waves too! its nice to go during low tide as the waves are very gentle but still have enough boost to carry him long distances. i keep on forgetting to bring the camera to the beach but one of these days i’ll get some footage of him doing his thing.

instead, here is a short clip of the nayoubizzle and his friend juan antonio having a water fight outside our house. nayou and juan antonio used to play together when we lived here three years ago. they were reunited today after all this time and picked up right where they left off. nayou started picking up some spanish words pretty quickly too so hopefully this will be the beginning of something regular.

aaaand, finally some random photos from brenda’s hipstamatic because they’re purrrty.

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this one was taken at burrito revolucion’s new location. its not as nice as the previous digs, but their burritos are still the best in the world!

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its been a busy week for the three of us. while i’m holed up in the film studios, my better halves have gone to no less than two birthday parties this week. the first one was for this kid nash, who turned four. he is a big kid – big enough that people regularly mistake him for a seven year old! his party was at the aquarium.

in between the next party, brenda and nayou snuck off to the beach for a play in the sand. they went with marley and tyler, twins who nayou has been spending a lot of time with in cape town.

i only know secondhand, but the beaches here are gorgeous. white sand, blue waters (albeit feezing), and nice warm sun. i’m looking forward to getting acquainted with the beach once we wrap!

yesterday was the twins’ birthday. they chose to have their party on a pirate ship (awesome!).

the birthday trifecta will be completed this sunday with nayou turning five. we’re going to keep it mellow and have a small gathering at imhoff farm, which has a nice cafe, a play area and a snake park.

in a couple of days its going be five months since we’ve moved to namibia. which is crazy because it feels like much less than that. the shooting schedule has us here for another five weeks, after which we will either be extended in swakopmund for another three weeks or move to cape town for three weeks and finish up there. i would love to get a chance to visit cape town – many of the crew are from there and say its absolutely wonderful. plus there are lots of yoga studios, asian restaurants and health food stores that stock staples like coconut oil and apple cider vinegar. fingers crossed!

we haven’t been on any adventures lately due to random parties and other commitments, which is why there has been a bit of a drought in terms of updates. we don’t really bust out the camera when we’re just hanging out at home. but we have been enjoying ourselves! but we do take video here and there! here are some highlights:

one of our newer discoveries is this small farmstead about 10km out of swakopmund called desert hills. they are only open on saturdays, when you can go and have lunch, hang out and check out and assortment of food and cosmetics they make on-site. its a really chill place and we’ve been back two weekends in a row. lots of the products they sell are made from the !nara plant, which is native to the area and used by the bushmen around swakopmund for thousands of years.

in other news, one of nayou’s best friends atticus turned 7 last week. and there was a bouncy castle at the party. oh yes.

last weekend the production threw a huge party to celebrate making it halfway through the shoot. everyone was invited and there were easily over 1,000 people there… seeing everyone made me realise exactly how big this movie really is. crazy! many of the people i spoke to where super tired from working long days in the desert for months on end, but it was still a big night. especially for me – i stumbled home early in the morning and passed out cold. i had to burn my hangover off in the sunday sun.

last week i turned 34. its been an unusually introspective sort of birthday for me this year, in a good way. a couple of days before my birthday i had this conversation with nayou:

nayou: papa, i’m luckier than you

me: why?

nayou: because i haven’t decided what i want to be yet

it got me thinking about the general perception that as you get older life presents less opportunities to you. there is definitely some truth to it, in the sense that you can’t go back in time and change all the things you wish you could. but at 34 i find myself really happy with where i am, for which i count myself among the lucky. i’ve got a partner i love so much, we have a beautiful son together, i have an interesting job that takes us all around the world and gives us the opportunity to take long stretches of time off. i’ve got a yoga practice that has give me profound insights into myself and shows no sign of letting up. sure life isn’t perfect, but then again no one’s is. and i have to say that i like mine. a lot. what more could i ask for?

skydiving.

yes, the one thing that was missing was a 30 second freefall at 220km/h (137mph) from an altitude 3000 meters (10,000ft). so this year i set out to fix that at the swakopmund skydiving club. last sunday we rustled up a big group of friends and took turns jumping out of planes. it was scary, exhilarating and really really fun!

check out  my “namibia” gang sign! looks like just an outline of the country!

i’ve also received some really thoughtful gifts. the kind that you end up using every day and thinking about the person that gave it to you.

one of those gifts is a super warm blanket from my mum:

i also got a big delivery of japanese food from my parents, plus another one is on its way from aya. we’ve already made a significant dent in the food stash. i’ve been missing those japanese flavours since we got here. hana has made something for me too so it looks like this is going to be the birthday that keeps on giving!

brenda and nayou got me a brand new backpack which was very much needed, and a massage. oh, and these beautiful works of art which now adorn my office:

thanks to everyone for all of their presents, well wishes and good vibes! its been a really nice birthweek 🙂