Ready for the long journey North ?

Friday 17th April arrived and it was suddenly our last day in Tucson: laundry to be done; rooms to be booked at Grand Canyon; our hire car for the trip, reserved online, so long ago, to be picked up; packing! The morning passed quickly, and at 3:00 pm in Jean's car, I collected Kate from her High School in South Tucson along with the two miniature turtles, which were to be dropped with Barbara for the weekend again. Disaster... as Kate was lifting the container to look at them, the lid flew off and everything spilt into the car, turtles and all. We managed to retrieve one tiny turtle, but could not find the other. We drove to the airport where I went to deal with the paperwork for the car, while Kate got on her hands and knees and looked under the car, under the seats - everywhere, without luck. We drove in convoy to Jean's house and dropped the turtle and parked Jean's car, leaving a message about the missing turtle, in case he/she emerged from somewhere in the car later. Then we set off together to the Patagonia area near Nogales, on the border of Arizona and Mexico - about an hour's drive - to collect Paulita from her ranch. Paulita has just got back from London after treatment for a tiny head tumour, which means that she can't drive - at least not for the time being. Paulita's ranch is off the beaten track in a quiet corner of the world. It consists of an inherited family house, built in a sort of spacious Spanish colonial style, filled with beautiful old furniture, paintings and carvings, with views of rolling Southern Arizona country, edged with a rim of blue rocky ridges on the horizon. There is a swimming pool (of course) and Paulita has added a tiny chapel in the same style a the house. The structure of the chapel is complete, and Paulita is now working on stained glass windows, most of which are using reclaimed old stained glass panels she has picked up in her travels. Beneath the chapel there will be a small basement museum, where Paulita will have a collection of curios. This is part of her plan to develop a sort of children's petting zoo, and have groups of children from schools in Nogales visit the ranch. She is busy developing her animal collection: the miniature donkeys are particularly sweet. There was a baby one there when we went over to the yard, and all of the donkeys came up to us curiously to be cooed over. This visit couldn't be rushed even though Paulita had her bag all ready to go. Eventually we got onto the road back to Tucson. On arrival, Tully, Declan, Chidi, Oksy, James and the girls were all in party mood. Luckily I'd planned and three quarters prepared an egg curry, using an Ed Bain recipe I got from U-tube that morning. It was a great success and so I can strongly recommend the recipe http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pxh70xVu7-4. It uses sweet potatoes. Later Dave (Kate's cousin who commissions and imports beautiful ceramic flower pots from Mexico), Susan (his wife, who teaches in Tucson), Garnet (his daughter, currently doing her PhD at Stanford) and Khalid (Garnet's partner) came round, and so it was a late, but merry evening.