Let the Fun Begin

Here are the pictures I meant to post yesterday. They are of our first impressions of the area:

This is the approach to the lighthouse in Port Isabel - where the bridge across Laguna Madre to South Padre Island begins (through our dirty windshield).













And a closer shot.













This is the view as we begin to cross the bridge to SPI. The bridge is about 3.5 km long.













The view of the southern part of the island from the bridge:













And looking northward from the bridge:













And a blurry shot just as we got off the Queen Isabella Bridge:













Today we headed over to McAllen, TX to see if we could find out anything about a birding trip into Mexico. We saw their lovely convention centre but there wasn't much information to be had about the birding trip. As I was not used to wearing my sandals, I went over on my left foot and incurred a minor sprain of my foot between the ankle and the toes. Ouch! It didn't really start to swell until later. We did pick up a bunch of information about various wildlife events and locations where we could go birding ourselves. We ate lunch at a Mexican food place in San Juan, TX just east of McAllen. We then drove over to South Padre Island to get the key for and get into our condo. By this time, my foot had started to swell and I belabouredly limped up the three flights of stairs to our unit. I immediately put ice on my foot (the previous tenants had left ice in the freezer thank goodness) and elevated. Poor Skip did all the traipsing up the stairs with our stuff from the car. Every time he came into the condo, he had more information about one or another of the tenants in the other five units.

The icing really helped (and the ibuprophen) and the foot feels a lot better already. I'll just take it easy these next few days. I am now wearing more sensible Teva (ugly) sandals with much better support. It feels good to get the breeze between my toes.

The high today was 19C - it's going up to the 30s by Sunday. Yessss!

Oh yeah, the condo turned out to be even nicer than I could have imagined.

The dining area:

















The living room:





























and the kitchen:





There's even a dishwasher.

I think we're really going to like it here.