It is a typical expedition to far-flung locales, wherein your final goal, today, is to breathe deeply of the rarified air acondicionado in the nearest Home Depot, which lies just over the border into Jalisco. It begins with a flag check, because should you start off on such a journey without enough breeze to at least flutter the cacophony of country flags and club burgees in the marina, you’ll surely die of heat stroke 15 steps before reaching the guard shack. It begins with the hope of some wind and ends in the back seat of a local Mexican family’s car—grandma tenderly cradling her sleeping granddaughter as we rumble down the cobblestone street and she talks to me about trying to find her way back to normalcy after the sudden and unexpected death of her husband a few months ago. Such is life in Mexico, where the lives of strangers become inextricably caught up and woven into the tapestry of your life, and how much richer our lives are for having these messy, random entanglements. Strangers who become friends. But I digress…with colorful scraps of nylon flapping encouraging lies, off we set, walking like the dogs do—a slow steady pace and keeping to what shadows we can find. The sun is like an oven on the back of my neck and as we pick our way from pale shadow to suggestions of shade, the town opens wide, swallowing every last scrap of errant wind.
Little liars
Summer survival tip #47: Walk in the shade like a dog. Dogs are smart like that.
We stop at Kiosko, to put more time on cell phones and stand gratefully in line, luxuriating in the frigid air. Maiko, whose family owns the red tienda in town, jokes that on days like this, you can find all of La Cruz standing in the cold Kiosko air, thoughtfully contemplating items they have no intention of buying, until they’ve cooled down enough to venture back out into the midday heat. He’s right. The place is packed—everyone drunk on the cool, cool air. At the highway, we hang a right, sticking close to the edge of the frontage road, even though the likelihood of getting hit is low. In La Cruz, people walk up the middle of the road and the sidewalks are reserved for late afternoon. Restaurants relocate to the sidewalks; shop owners sit under fans and hang out in doorways, as whole families spill out onto the smooth gray concrete, dragging lawn chairs and tables out of the unbearable heat inside. The children run laughing from tree to tree while adults sit fanning themselves with bits of cardboard and local gossip. Everyone says, “Hola, como estan? Heyyy, Chaparrito, que tal, amigos? Adonde van?”The cars know to look out for people in the road—they’ll actually stop for you, motion you past with a wave and a smile. The concept of points for taking out wayward pedestrians hasn’t migrated this far south. Yes, all of Mexico is a seething hotbed of violence and danger.
Our friend Katya owns Café Schulet. She’s letting us know how crazy we are to be walking up the hill in this heat. She’s not wrong.
Nala trots ahead, eager to get off the scorched blacktop road. She hops up onto the grassy berm whenever possible and at the halfway point to our second stop, tries to convince me with doleful eyes that we should take the shortcut back to town, cutting through a shady overgrown lot. I quell her mutiny with promises of the crispy fried pork that lies a mere 10 minutes farther down the road.
So shady…
Twenty minutes we’ve been trudging through the humid furnace that is afternoon in La Cruz de Huanacaxtle in late summer. It’s worth it though, because the carnitas in La Cruz just might be the best in the world. This guy has a calling. Rumor has it he raises his own pigs. All I know is we are finally sitting down in the shade, drinking ice cold orange Fanta from thick recyclable glass bottles and eating incredible carnitas tacos. The dog is busy lapping up cold water out of a Styrofoam tray and savoring the rich crispy pork bits that come her way. As per usual, total strangers smile greetings to us around mouthfuls of carnitas, saying, “Provecho,” after they’ve swallowed this food of the gods. Life is good.
The Promised Land
The man is legend.
All is right in the world.
Even though all of the salsas are amazing, choosing the right combination is serious business.
We were supposed to stop and smile, but the pull of the carnitas was too great. We were weak. With hunger. Yeah, that’s it.
After lunch, Steve takes the dog and goes back to the marina to work; Eli and I stroll casually across the highway to the bus stop; no Frogger action this side of town. It takes all of three minutes for a Combi to pull up and off we go to Bucerias. Mexicans are always floored by the idea that their public transportation is better than what we had back home. I remember in the early 90’s, living in Cayucos but going to school and work 20 miles away in San Luis Obispo. We had no car for a while and the bus only came a couple of times a day from Cayucos to Morro Bay. Working the night shift at Taco Bell on Santa Rosa Blvd, I got off at 2am. After almost getting arrested for attempting to walk home on the freeway, I tried staying at a co-worker’s apartment until the busses started running again at 6 or 7 in the morning, but found the crazy homeless people in the park were a lot less handsy. As busses go, a beat to crap van that’s been converted into a shuttle bus is awesome. Because they come all the time, until about 9:30 or 10 at night. Some of them even have air conditioning. Sitting in the back means you get all of the wind, but it’s hard to see your stop when the bus is full. We overshot our mark and had to get off at the arroyo. “Bajan a la arroyo, por favor,” I said and then we were standing on the corner, in the shadow of the bridge, with an abalone shell wall to our backs, town to the left and the beach only a block behind us. I step off the sidewalk, into the creek bed that everyone uses as a road, to get a picture of the ocean, and am warned away by an aggressive rooster. He’s got some hens and mid-sized chicks foraging for delicious insects in the shade. This must be the dangerous Mexico you always hear about, no?
When school is in session, there’s a guy who sells sugar cane to the kids at recess and breaks.
These busses rock.
The good seat.
Two blocks up on the left is The Little B, tienda de semillas and every other thing under the sun. Really…this is where the local chefs come to buy exotic spices. Boisterous kids in uniforms stop by for after school snacks and tiny abuelitas peruse the medicinal tea selection, which surely has a remedy for most anything that ails a body. An overhead fan lazily stirs the air over bins of dried chiles, tamarindo, and dusky sticks of cinnamon, making the store smell like mole and now I’m hungry again. “Hay cúrcuma?” I ask the girl behind the counter. “Yes, we have turmeric,”she says in perfect English, “Cuánto quiere?” I buy my couple grams of turmeric and some powdered shrimp for Thai food and we’re off to the next stop, which is only a couple of doors up.
So much good stuff in sacks on the floor.
Spices, mixes, fruits, and seeds
Herbal remedies are big in Mexico. Never really went out of style.
You want one, don’t you?
Dried tamarind, before it’s been processed.
Wet tamarind is infinitely easier to work with.
That chick behind the counter is badass.
Eli said, “Look Mom, it’s your arch enemy!” Freaking gluten. Ugh.
Right now, you wish there was an app that lets you smell things in far off places.
Herb packets, for medicinal and spicing purposes.
The beauty supply store, that used to share space with an equally tiny pharmacy, has expanded into its very own storefront, but no longer carries the crazy hair colors I lean toward when banishing the silver-white hairs that have been invading my head since I was 19. No neon pink, no royal purple, no acid green, no too-sky blue. There is however, another store that has them, I am assured. Two blocks up and to the right. Probably. We Frogger our way across the highway, because Bucerias is a big busy place, and trudge our way uphill in the sweltering oven that passes for afternoon. Three long blocks up we find the store, but it’s closed. The guy working next door is standing limply in the doorway, hoping for a breeze. “Veinte minutos,”He says, pointing at the locked door. “Están regresando en veinte minutos”. “Hay un cajero cerca de aquí?” I ask. “Sí,”He says, happy to be of help. “Dos o tres cuadras de allí,”he says, pointing in the direction of La Cruz. It must be the heat that makes me turn toward La Cruz and begin walking toward what Eli would later dub Schrödinger’s ATM. I’m pretty sure it was more than a few blocks, but finally we stumbled upon what looked for all the world like a bank but was something else entirely. Cajeros of indeterminate function, accepting pre-printed paper slips instead of cards and entirely unsuited to our pupose. “Hay un cajero cerca de aqui?” I ask Jorge the guard. He says something I don’t quite catch, but suspect would translate to, “These are not the droids you are looking for,” before thoughtfully scratching his chin and thinking on it for a minute. “Vayan… tal vez a…. cinco cuadras de allí, a la derecha. “ He points helpfully towards Puerto Vallarta.
They were the longest 5 blocks we ever walked.
To be continued….because honestly, the dehydration and near heatstroke were sucky.