on the edge

The Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe

The Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe
  Originally uploaded by waywuwei

Every December in the weeks before Christmas, is celebrated the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe who is the patron Saint of Mexico. It's a big deal, especially in places like Puerto Vallarta where she is the town patron also. It goes on for over a week and each day groups of pilgrims come from different places to the local church. They arrive with candles and elaborate floats that they've brought from the place where they live. Many walk all of the way. Each time a group of pilgrims arrive the church bell ring. This goes on night and day for a week. At the peak of pilgrim arrivals two days before the feast day, the bells ring every 15 minutes night and day.

Rooftop Singers

  Rooftop Singers 
  Originally uploaded by waywuwei

One of the things I love about Mexico is this phenomenon that occurs on occasions. When we lived in Bucerias about an hour north of here, we had two neighbors, Juan and Maria. Juan was in his 90's and had lived through the revolution and would often talk about it. Every year on Juan's birthday, we would be woken up in the early morning by a Mariachi band. Maria would hire them to wake Juan on the morning of his birthday. It was an incredibly beautiful way to wake up in the morning and a beautiful gift.

This group began playing around 5:15 am this morning. They are still playing now as I write this at 9:45 am. They are not quite as wonderful as a full Mariachi group, just a drummer and an accordion player, but the accordion player is really good and knows enough songs to fill 4+ hours. I'm not sure what the occasion is but I suspect it is someone's birthday who loves music.

An Amish Vendor

There are areas in Mexico where there are farms owned by the Amish. The younger members of the community show up from time to time selling cookies and cheese at the traffic lights in the Banderas Bay area. They are always young, the men wearing overalls and straw cowboy hats and the women wearing long dresses and little traditional caps. They don't speak a word of English, just Spanish but with blue eyes and blond hair look for all the world like gringoes.

Chacala

The Village of Chacala is about 2 hours north of Puerto Vallarta on the Pacific coast in the state of Nayarit. Because Chacala is on a small bay the beach is almost always swimmable. Many beaches on the Pacific coast here are not often swimmable. The Pacific rarely is "pacific". In the Puerto Vallarta area, the towns are on the Bay of Banderas which has many swimmable beaches. This is why it is a favorite vacation destination for foreigners as well as Mexicanos.

The restaurants along this beach were started by fishermen and their wives. Many actually live there in the back of the restaurant. The dish of choice is the pescado sarandeado which is a fresh fish, split, maranated and cooked over a wood fire. Often the fisherman will bring a bucket by your table and let you pick out the fish. You often have to wait until 2 o'clock for the meal because the fishermen don't return from the morning fishing until 12 o'clock, but you always know the fish is fresh!

See where Chacala is... [?]

A new year- 2007

This year for Christmas, we were contacted by some folks who wanted to rent our house for the two weeks over Christmas and New Years. They made us an offer we couldn't refuse so we decided to head off on a vacation of our own. Many say, why, you're living in paradise already. The problem is when you live here full time it's home and sometimes it's nice to get away from phones, internet, newspapers and kick back, read a book, do some diving, walk in a rainforest, etc.

So we chose the island of Dominica, one of the windward islands in the Caribbean. There's great scuba diving and most of the island is a mountainous tropical rainforest with literally hundreds of rivers, waterfalls, hot springs and rainbows. you see, it rains a lot in a rainforest, so rainbows were a daily thing. It was quiet with lots of opportunities to sit back and read a book with some real exercise too.

Now, we're back in Bucerias, a different sort of paradise, but it's good to be home...

Land Crabs

Each year in the spring the land crabs make their yearly migration back to the ocean. If they are lucky enough to actually make it there, they dig burrows on the beach, mate and deposit their eggs in the ocean. With humans increasingly populating their territory, they have to cross highways and cross properties many of which are surrounded by fences and walls. During that time we find them everywhere. Our little dog will often find them in closets and under beds. If I can catch them I take them to the beach. Sometimes they don't survive the encounter with the dog. Sometimes they stumble into the swimming pool where the chlorine does them in. It's a hard life being a land crab.

Sunset in Puerto Vallarta over Gringo Gulch

The houses on the hillside are on the north side of the valley of the River Cuale which comes down out of the mountains and flows to the bay through Puerta Vallarta. It is called Gringo Gulch because during the filming of "The Night of the Iguana" in 1964, a film that put Puerto Vallarta on the map, many of the stars such as Richard Burton, Liz Taylor, and director John Huston bought houses in this area. The church in the distance is this church, the church of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The town of Puerto Vallarta is built at the base of the Sierra Madre mountains. The mountains in the distnce are the Sierra Vallejo mountains in the state of Nayarit where I live.

This picture was taken from an old condominium building in the hills above Play Muertos named "La Alborada" which means "the dawn".

Oaxaca: At Night

What struck me more than anything about Oaxaca was that it is a people town. It’s the kind of place where people go out at night or during the day if they don’t have to work that day, and enjoy the beautiful weather, the cafes, the parks, the music, the parades and whatever is happening that day.  The street, Macedonia Alcala is a pedestrian walk that runs from the Zocalo north for six blocks. The walk starts at the Santo Domingo Church on the North end and ends at the south end of the Zocalo. While I was there the next street east, 5 de Mayo, was being redone as a pedestrian walk. There are also a number of side streets around the Santo Domingo Church that were closed to traffic. The net effect is to create a large area where people can gather, walk and enjoy being social without traffic.  Here people are king, not their machines. With the winter weather dry and in the 80’s during the day and cool in the 50’s during the night, the word ideal comes to mind.

Oaxaca: Language School & Change of Residence

When I got up in the morning of the first day, after lying in bed for 10 extra minutes because it was very cold in my room, I dashed across the intervening space between my room and the building where the shower was. Standing there shivering, I waited for some warm water to come, but there was none. Reluctantly I got dressed and decided to skip it. Later at breakfast I mentioned to Angela that there was no hot water. She took me into the bathroom and showed me what to do. My conclusion was that I had done something wrong. In the afternoon I took my delayed shower, but the next morning I did the same thing and again there was no hot water. I reached the conclusion that the person who turned the hot water heater on in the morning was probably getting up about the same time I was and it took about half an hour to get hot water. That night I had difficulty getting to sleep because there was someone occupying the room next to mine and there was a doorway between rooms with a very thin plywood door. I could hear people breathing, the wood was so thin. In the evening there were about five people sitting around talking loudly with the TV on and this went on until almost midnight. At around five in the morning the dog next door started barking and continued until I finally get up at 7:00. Again there was no hot water so I reluctantly made the decision to find new quarters. The distance between the language school and my home stay was around 14 blocks and after two days of walking back and forth twice a day it became clear that this along with the other issues I had with the home stay wouldn’t work for two weeks.

Oaxaca: On the Way, Arrival & Home Stay

Taking off in the morning from Puerto Vallarta, we always take off toward the Bay, unless rarely, the winds are coming out of the mountains. We circle 180 degrees and climb out over the coastal mountains. The mountains are always misty and ephemeral before the sun burns off the mist. We head almost directly west to Mexico City. I change planes in Mexico City, just a short, less than an hour layover.

Taking off from Mexico city we circle around and head south-east right past the major volcano in the Mexico city vicinity: Popocatepetl ("the smoking mountain"). It was not smoking today, who knows, maybe it gave up the habit. Somehow I doubt it. In just over an hour we descended into the Oaxaca valley.

Bucerias: The Fiesta Of Our Lady of Peace

A reminder to those who are interested, the festival of Our Lady of Peace, the patron of our local Catholic Church is just gearing up. It will run for about 10 days, culminating on January 28th with the blessing of the boats which happens around 12:00 noon central time. The nearby restaurants are usually jammed so reservations are necessary for a good seat. Adrianos is the the place to be for a view of the boats. There is always plenty of standing room on the beach and on the plaza. The festival culminates in the evening at around 11:00 pm central time with the lighting of the castillo, a three story tower filled with fireworks. An event not to be missed. Unfortunately, I will be in Oaxaca this year...

Here's last year's report...

Road Trip: Oaxaca

Tomorrow I head off for a three week trip to the Mexican city of Oaxaca. I will be attending 2 weeks of Spanish language intensive and for the third week my wife Mary will be joining me for a week of exploration. I have never been to Oaxaca so this will be a new experience and if I can get online to download pictures, I will share with you my experiences there.

The language school is Academia Vinigúlaza which comes very highly recommended by several friends who have studied there. I will be reporting back on how that experience turns out. Through the director of Vinigúlaza I was able to connect up with a Mexican family with whom I will be staying for the two weeks of language school. This will minimize my reliance on English to communicate and force me to get up to speed quickly. I have done several intensives before but never a total immersion experience. We'll see how that works. My goal is to be able to read and communicate on a conversational level.

Oaxaca is known for it's cuisine. I am looking forward to that and to taking a cooking class or two to learn how to make moles, one of my favorite dishes of Mexico.

The valley around Oaxaca contains many towns each of which are known for their arts and crafts. That is also a high priority for exploration.

Another must see is the ancient Zapotec city of Monte Alban. We'll have a report on that too.

Stay tuned....

Chico's Paradise

Chico's Paradise is one of those places that I tend to avoid. During the high season here it is a featured destination for tourists out to experience something a little different. It was September, which is the dead month here and the Mexican vacationers have returned home because school has started and the "snow birds" from up North will not arrive until late October and November. So the locals call September, Septiembre in Spanish, Septi-hambre, hambre meaning hungry. It's very quiet.

A Surfing Contest in Sayulita

In December our neighboring town to the north held one of a series of surfing contests. Sayulita is a beautiful little town that has a reputation for attracting young people and it's probably mostly due to the fact that there is an excellent break that produces some fairly reliable surfing conditions. One of the purposes of the contests is to select the best  surfers for the Mexican National team that will compete worldwide.

The surfing contests draw large crowds of spectators. The beach restaurants all have chairs set up on the beach with umbrellas or palapas so that their patrons can relax, drink, eat and watch the surfing. As long as you buy a few drinks you can take a chair and spend the day.

Getting back to our roots

As promised we revisited the new vegetarian restaurant in our little town of Bucerias and had another outstanding meal. The maestro behind these works of culinary art is Andrew and I don't use the words "culinary arts" lightly. My wife and I lived in the San Francisco/Berkeley area of California for over 12 years and great restaurants were plentiful. Roots in my opinion is right up there with the very best of the SF Bay area.

Last night I had the Black bean cakes. They were phenomenal! I can't wait to go back. My wife had the Sweet Soy Ginger Bowl and said that it was incredible, so much so that she refused to share a bite with anyone. The sandwiches brought raves from the crowd. They were served on home made whole grain buns. I watched the portobello sandwich being inhaled accompanied by moans of delight. My son raved about his roasted vegetable sandwich.

The fresh fruit and vegetable juices are also outstanding. My favorite is the Red Beet mixture. My wife favors the watermelon creation. Both are excellent.

On the next page I have put the menu. Unfortunately it does not contain the juice menu but I'll add it when I get a copy.

In summary I have to say that this is a world class restaurant. When we were eating we were debating whether they should even say that they were a vegetarian restaurant, just because many people would not come because the word vegetarian puts them off. I think as the word gets around, this will change because this is really great food, so great that you'll wonder why you thought meat was so great anyway....

Another vegetarian Restaurant this time in... Bucerias?

It's hard to believe, but we actually have a vegetarian restaurant in the little pueblito of Bucerias. Not only that, the chef worked for, I think it was, 4 years in a five star vegan restaurant in Toronto. So the food is not only healthy, but is a gourmet experience. The name of the place is "Roots". It is located on Lazaro Cardenas in the block before the foot bridge into El Centro. I've only been twice and can't wait to go back, but I'll update this with a more complete description of the really excellent menu.

A Vegetarian Restaurant in Puerto Vallarta

I know it's hard to believe but there really is a vegetarian restaurant in Puerto Vallarta, and not only that it's really good. It's called Planeta Vegetariano. It's located a half block north of the big church on a side street near the intersection of Hidalgo and Iturbe. They are open for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It's buffet style with several entrees, soup, rice (whole grain and white), at least 10-15 different salads. For 65 pesos it's a good deal and the food is healthy and excellent.

The Festival of Our Lady of Peace

Every year in January, in our little town of Bucerias there is a festival celebrating Our Lady of Peace (La Virgen de la Paz) who is the patron of our local Catholic church. The fiesta lasts for  ten days during which the streets fill up with vendors of everything under the sun as well as scores of carnival rides. On the last day of the festival, the festivities begin with the blessing of the boats. Bucerias and the town just north of us, La Cruz de Huanacaxtle are both fishing villages. At  around noon the boats congregate off shore and one by one they gun their motors and race at top speed for the beach. Just as they hit the sand everyone hops out of the boat and as a team they try to haul the boat up onto the beach as far as they can.

The Dance of the Garobos

Several day ago while staying at a friend's house, I walked into the guest bedroom to see this. Here in Mexico we have two common lizards, the green Iguanas and the gray/black Garobos. I'm not sure what their actual scientific name is but the locals call them Garobos. They typically inhabit roofs where they can be a pest because they love to burrow underneath the Spanish tiles, disloging them.

I was not sure what these two were doing, but when I went into the room the next day they were still there. They were hanging on the sliding screen door and the only way for me to get out there was by sliding the screen door. When I did that, they stayed exactly where they were and they let me take pictures of them without moving. As I was going back in, I noticed that there was a very tiny, inch long Garobo on the tile floor. Clearly the larger Garobo was giving birth. Was the other Garobo the father? What was his role in this. Do Garobos form matrimonial pairs? Just an interested friend? If anyone who reads this has any knowledge of tropical, coastal, Mexican lizards, I'd love to know more about what what really going on here.

The Spay/Neuter Clinic

The animal rescue group here in Bucerias has existed for a number of years. It was started by a group of women who saw that an excessive numbers of "street animals" needed help. The street animals are usually in pretty bad shape, riddled with worms and skin parasites. They often have skin diseases and are severely malnourished. To add to the problem, they are all un-neutered and the females have endless rounds of puppies and kittens when they themselves do not even have enough food to sustain them. The attempts to deal with them on a one by one basis fall short due to the large numbers of stray animals and the high cost of using local vets. The animal rescue group has been able to rescue some of the animals but the available level of funding has made the job difficult and the possibility of building an animal shelter is far beyond the reach of the available funds.

The Sunday Market

The first time I heard about the weekly Sunday Market in Bucerias, I asked where it was and how to get there. I was told, "Oh, you just drive up the river and you'll see it." I thought that those were pretty strange directions. We have a river that runs through Bucerias, bisecting it into north-south areas. The river is invariably dry with maybe a small rivulet of dirty water running down from the Colonias which have inadequate sewage. So the drill is to get off the highway and drive up the river until you see the tianguis (Market). This Sunday, it wasn't dry; there was a flood of water coming down, so finding a dry parking spot was a little difficult.

The tianguis is on a side street that branches off from the river bed and on most days is indistinguishable from any other street, but on Sunday it's crammed with impromptu booths set up just for the day. The roofs are invariably plastic drop cloths, either the blue or the red kind, set up to give relief from the sun and a shady place to examine the variety of goods offered for sale.

Dinner in the clouds

A brief 15 minute ride from downtown Puerto Vallarta will take you several thousand feet up into the hills to an eagles perch in the clouds over looking the bay and the old town. The name of the place is Las Carmelitas and it is a palapa (palm thatched roof) restaurant with no electricity (only generators here) and a killer view. The road up is straight up, well not exactly straight, but it's a tough climb in any car. At the entrance at the bottom of the hill were you turn off the main road, they hit you up for 50 pesos a head and give you a receipt which you can apply to your bill at the end of the night. This keeps people from coming up who just want to go for the view and skip the restaurant. A two wheel drive car will make it up, but more than a few loose their nerve on the numerous high climb angle switch-backs. Some sections of the road are paved in concrete because of the problems with erosion in the rainy season. But perseverance is rewarded.

A Short Trip to D.F. (Mexico City)

Here in Mexico, Mexico City is not referred to as such by the local Mexicans. They refer to the city as D.F. (pronounced: Day Effay). It stands for Distrito Federal the same way our capital is referred to as D.C. So my wife, my son and I headed off from the Puerto Vallarta area to D.F. for some business, but for me mostly an opportunity to see the capital city which I had never been to and do the usual touristy things. Before leaving I had had my proper measure of frightful stories about people being abducted by cabs and being robbed or held for ransom. I had been particularly warned about the dreaded green and white taxis, usually VW bugs. I did follow the warnings and stayed with the unmarked hotel summoned taxis and the ones marked "Sitio" which congregate at marked taxi stands and are usually yellow and white, that is when I was not strap hanging with the locals on the Metro subway system.

Little Camarino's 5th Birthday

My friend Camarino who runs a building crew in the local area building houses, invited my wife, my son and I to attend his youngest son's fifth birthday party. His name is Camarino just like his dad so we all call him little Camarino. The age five is not a special year so it's just the normal five year old kid party. Some years are special like the 3rd year, a year of much celebration. The 15th year for girls is also very important.

A visit to Chacala

Chacala is a little beach town about an hour and a half north of Puerto Vallarta. Four years ago it took a half an hour to get from the main highway to Chacala because there was only a dirt road that was all but impassable to anything but a 4 x 4. Now with a new paved road Chacala is 5 minutes from the highway.