on the edge

A Mennonite Vendor

There are areas in Mexico where there are farms owned by the Mennonites. 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!

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