I’m taking a short break from the Netherlands posts to do a more recent update. I got to add a new country to my list - Mexico. Oddly enough, it was a work trip for a Partner Event, so there was very little beach time, and mostly it was just way too hot. But the weather ended upbeing good, and I got a round of golf in. There are a few Vancouver updates in this post as well.

So before we head southt o Mexico, a few updates from around Vancouver. Prior to the trip, we had a busy few days at home, with Whitecaps games (we have a string of them over the next month or so!) and othe rthings going on. The weather has been nice, as the summer comes to an end.

On the Sunday (September 15th) before I headed down to Mexico, we had "Car Free Day" on Main Street. Justine and I walked over to check it out. It was crazy busy!

The event stretched from 10th Ave all the way up to 30th, and it was pretty much wall-to-wall people!

While it;s sad to see the summer come to a close, it does mean that it's time for pumpkin beer!

Before the Whitecaps game, we made a stop at Fanny Bay, one of our favorite restaurants, for wine, some oysters anf this amazing crab boil!

Off to Cancun Mexico

Our biggest partner was holding their annual Partner Event at the Andaz Mayakoba resort just outside of Cancun Mexico. It’s a bit surprising, but I have never been to Mexico. Frankly, it;s never been high on my list, so this was a good way to check it off the list. I was flying down on a red-eye Monday night, getting into Mexico Tuesday morning. The flight out of Vancouver was delayed, so we left late, I missed my connection and had to get rebooked. Fortunately, I did get upgraded to business class for this flight and managed to sleep a good portion of it. All-in-all, it was a bit of a fiasco, but eventually I got there.

Flying into Cancun.

I was surprised how much jungle there was as we flew in. I was expecting it to be more developed.

The event I was attending was a Partner Meeting for our biggest Distributor. They and their Reseller account for about 75% of our business, so it was a good opportunity to meet a lot of them in one place, have some good discussions about our business and give them an update on our products and services. The main reason I was going was that I had the bulk of our 2 hour presentation on the main stage. But it is really the time spent off the stage thats more important.

I arrived around 1:00 on Tuesday afternoon, and fortunately my room was ready for me. The room was quite nice, with the only issue being that there was really no work space. It is a resort after all, but a desk would have been really helpful.

After I arrived and got settled, I had a few hours before the opening events and dinner. Do I headed down to the beach area to check it out and go for a swim. I thought this might be the only chance I was going to have to get in the ocean, as the forcast for the week was for a lot of rain.

As the resort was quite big - it was almost a mile from my room to the beach - they provided bicycles to ride around on. They were everywhere, and as the resort property was quite flat, it made it easy to get around.

This was the ride from my room to the beach. It was quite lovely - following a path through the jungle.

The beach area was quite nice. I immediately found some of our partners enjoying the pool area and a few drinks. As I still needed to get myself sorted, I took a quick swim in the ocean, chatted for a bit and then rode back to my room.

The pool area was quite nice - I never did have time to get in it.

And why would you, when the beach looks like this?

This was one of the reastaurants that we ate at, a couple of the nights.

They had art, in this style, on all the buildings around the resort. It was quite nice.

There was no time to just hang out on a beach chair, but I did get to swim twice. The water was so warm!

There will be birds - don't you worry. This one is a Plain Chachalaca. Basically a wild Mexican chicken.

The event was very busy, but very productive. There were lots of great events, and we got to havbe a lot of very good conversations with partners. One Partner, Tony, was kind enough to invite me to play gold one afternoon. So despite the heat, we went over to the very nice golf course on the property and played a round. Well, we called it playing golf, but I was awful. Easily the worst round I have played in a long time. But it was 35 degress and close to 100% hunidity, so I’m blaming that…

The golf course at the resoirt is professional quality - there's a LIV event being hosted there in February.

A couple of shots of the course.

Tony was kind enought o arrange the round and we had a great day, despite not playing very well.

The coatis, also known as coatimundis, which are Mexcio and Central America's version of the raccoon. There were a fair number about.

Sadly, I didn't see any actual crocs.

This was the coolest part of the course - there was an actual cenote in the middle of the fairway!

And of course, I hit my ball straight into it, and had to go retreive it!

This hole had an even bigger one - fortunately I did not put my ball in that one.

The golf course was beautifully maintained.

We eneded up with much better weather than what was projected. It rained a little bit, but mostly it was sun and a few clouds, which made for some great sunsets.

You could see Cozumel across the water from the beach.

There was a surprising amount of wildlife on the propety. One of my co-workers saw a very big deer; there were raccoons at the beach trying to steal food, crocodiles in the water and most frequent were the coatis.

Mom and a little one, just come down from the trees.

This guy was at the beach in the morning, helping himself to whatever might have been missed.

This is what a lot of the property looked like. It was pretty dense jungle, which was nice.

The last morning, we had only a couple of meetings before I needed to head to the airport. I woke up early to go see what birds I could find. I didn’t have a lot of success, but there were a few.

Great Kiskadee - these were quite common.

I'm not sure about this one. I think it's a type of oriole, but the colours are odd.

Another one I'm not sure of. Nothing comes up in the bird app...

Yuctan Jay

Tropical Kingbird

Back to Galiano

I got back to Vancouver around midnight on Friday night, and we were immediately off to Galiano for a couple of days. It had been over three weeks since Justine had been there and over amonth for me, and we had lots to do. Our main project was to try and finish the wood shed. Sadly this did not go well - we got the roof on, but only discovered we did not have enough of the tar paper to put under the shingles until Sunday, when the hardware store was closed.

The main goal was to try and get the roof finished.

It was a team effort!

While we got the plywood on the roof, we did not make it to the shingles.

We spent a lot of time clearing out the gardens. They were not nearly as productive as I would have liked, so I will see what next year brings.

The Rose of Sharon I planted late in the year had one blossom on it.

And our one apple tree with it's 5 apples was still looking good. We tried one, but I think it was still too early.

I did manage to sneak in one round of golf. It's no wonder we have deer problems on the island...

e came home on Monday night, and we have a very busy spell ahead of us - both with things planned in and around Vancouver, as well as with work travel. I’m not sure how soon those next Netherlads posts are going to get done.

Wednesday, we went to the Whitecaps game - the Canadian Championship against Toronto (TFC)> Tahnkfully the good guys won - a threepeat for the Whitecaps!