Wedding in the mountains

In Mexico it is traditional for everyone to pitch in when there is a wedding in the family. Once a few years back my brother-in-law got married and we had a "pot luck" wedding. It was one of the greatest weddings we've been to. Here it's the norm. So when my friend Camarino asked me to come up into the hills to photograph a wedding of some family friends, I immediately accepted. I didn't know what I was getting into but that was the fun of it.

The wedding was in a town named Las LLanitos (pronounced Las Yanitos) which was an hour+ into the hills east of Puerto Vallarta. Camarino headed up on Friday because as a part of his contribution to the festivities, he would procure a steer and butcher it to feed all of the wedding guests. I headed up on Saturday a few hours before the wedding. The road into the mountains becomes a dirt road before it leaves Puerto Vallarta. It starts out following the Rio Cuale (the Cuale River) which runs through Puerto Vallarta. After 10 minutes or so the road leaves the Rio Cuale and heads straight up into the mountains. It's a steady climb all the way. About 5 minutes into the climb I noticed that my oil light was coming on. I stopped and checked my oil only to discover that I didn't have very much. I said my prayers and headed back down to Puerto Vallarta and got an oil fill but was unable to discover why the oil was so low. I bought an extra 4 liters of oil as insurance and headed back up because I didn't want to miss the wedding.

I made it to Las LLanitos in plenty of time; in fact I was a few hours early and my oil held out. Las LLanitos means a small flat space, obviously in the mountains. The church was a very small country Catholic Church that might hold 50 people in a pinch. In the center of town was a coral where clearly they had riding competitions and the usual cowboy tests of skills. Maybe 7 or 8 houses were in Las LLanitos.

The people began filtering in after an hour or so and after another hour or so, the bride and groom arrived. It was a typical Catholic wedding with a full Mass followed by the exchange of vows. After the ceremony we formed a caravan for a 20 minute drive to the town where the groom's family live.

Las Mesas (the tables) is another little town perched on a ridge in the mountains. It is about the same size as Las LLanitos with its own little school and 7 or 8 houses. The central fixture of the town is a large basketball court built of concrete and which serves as the town square and main point of all social gatherings. It was here that the reception was held. Las Mesas has no electricity except for a small solar panel on each house that generates enough electricity to power some small lights. The water is piped in from up higher in the mountains and runs into a trough in front of the house. All washing, dishes, personal, etc occurs here. Camarino brought up a generator which powered some lights for the basketball court and they had hired a DJ who brought up a generator and a sound system so there was music for dancing. There were tables scattered around the court, but most people just hung out around the court drinking beer and we were all served a delicious meal. Camarino had cooked up a very large pot of birria which is beef in a tasty red sauce. The women served us the birria with hand made tortillas, beans and rice. And of course there was lots of beer.

After the meal the bride and groom cut the cake and gave each other a piece. This was followed by dancing and the traditional throwing of the bride's garter to the available women in the group. In the Mexican tradition the best man ties an apron on the groom which he throws to the available men in the audience. There was much drinking and much dancing with very loud music. I faded about midnight or so but the party raged on. Our accommodations were a store room attached to the house which had no windows and a dirt floor. Something like 7 or 8 or us slept there by putting down plastic mesh feed bags over which we put blankets. I had brought a pillow, a blanket and a poncho so I was pretty comfortable. Not exactly like my comfortable bed at home but certainly passable.

I awoke in the morning and went out to find a pot of menudo cooking over the outdoor fireplace. Menudo is a traditional breakfast soup made from the stomach lining of a steer. I usually pass on it but in this situation it was the only thing on the menu and I was hungry. It turned out to be delicious.

The father of the groom already had his horse saddled up and was getting ready to go out to the corral to feed the cattle and lead them out to pasture. Camarino was setting up a large brass caldron over three rocks and was building a fire underneath. He brought out several large bags of fat from the steer and began to melt the fat. In the process, some of the fat melts and the more solid parts become crispy and these parts are what is known as chicharons. After they cool they are eaten as a snack like potato chips and also as a condiment with soup. After the chicharons were done he cut up the internal organ meats and cooked them in the hot fat. These were cut up, passed around and eaten with a little lime juice. During this process which took up most of the day, we all sat around and drank beer in the shade of a small palapa roofed lean to while Camarino did the cooking.

At one point I took a walk up past the corral, up on a ridge where I could get a good view of the town and the surrounding mountains. It was the beginning of June and the earth was dry and powdery. The summer rains had not yet begun. Here it is dry all winter, starting in November through to June. Though it was hot in the sun, the breeze in the shade and the beautiful vistas of the mountains in the distance made it a magical experience.

At the end of the day we got ready to leave. Camarino needed to drive some family members to their home so we took off in his truck. It turned out that the family lived in a remote valley that took us almost an hour to get there and an hour to return. The valley is only accessible via a one lane dirt road that snakes down the steep side of the valley. At one point we had to bush whack because the road was blocked by a fallen tree. When we arrived at the floor of the valley we found a river and four houses. That was the full extent of habitation in the valley. Of course there was no electricity, not even the solar cells of Las Mesas. They had no tractors, trucks or any mechanical devices at all. They had horses, cattle and the way that they farmed was the same as they had been doing for thousands of years. They planted corn with a stick from their stock of seed corn saved from the previous harvest. When the fields would stop producing good corn, they would burn it off and let it lie fallow for 3 years, classic Native American farming techniques.

The homestead was a typical Mexican rancho design that has a long porch on the front with the rooms behind. Behind the house was a lean to structure containing all of the necessities for farming the land. There was no running water not even the piped in variety of Las Mesas. Here the river was the water source and all water came by bucket from the river. In Las LLanitos and Las Mesas there was a highway and regular buses so it was quite simple to take a bus into the larger towns to buy supplies. Here there was only the long dirt road and no buses, a very isolated but idyllic existence.

When we got back to Las Mesas, I had to deal with the fact that my truck was probably not going to make it back to Bucerias. I had enough oil to get started, but the rate of leakage had increased and I didn't know how to stop it. We decided to take the truck to the nearest place that had a mechanic to see if there was something he could do. I took along two people from the party and set out ahead of Camarino for the next town. One of my passengers was one of the worst borachos (drunk) of the whole wedding. He had spent part of the afternoon sleeping on the ground and was now mobile and ready to go even though nothing he said made any sense and he rattled on in a steady stream of gibberish. During the process of my adventure I realized that my friend was one of those people who lives in a state of grace. Despite his intoxicated state he had high spirits and sang Mexican ranchero songs that I played on the CD player. He alerted the people in the town that I needed help and tried to explain to them in his gibberish that even they could not understand, that I needed help. I did buy him one beer, the empty one in the picture, but no more.

We made it to the next town but my oil was gone. As it turned out, I had had an oil change and the garage had replaced my oil filter with the wrong one. The filter was too long and the fan blade was hitting the filter and knocked it loose causing all of the oil to leak out. Needless to say there was no replacement filter in those parts. With no choice but to leave the truck there, I hopped in the back of Camarino's truck and rode home with him. In the back with me were the generator, the cooking equipment, Camarino's three children and an older friend from Vallarta. The ride down the mountain was beautiful. The colors in the sky were especially beautiful; the air was cool and clear. A beautiful end to an experience I will always remember.

Postscript: The next day I went back up to the place where my truck was with a new oil filter and since the mechanic wasn't there; I fixed it myself and drove home.