Viva Mexico!

I’m back in Puerto Vallarta and have just returned from a great evening with Ellen and Dick.  As usual it began with Dick’s excellent margaritas and Ellen’s impeccable choice of appetizers, blue cheese and crackers with mixed nuts .  Then we took a taxi to a restaurant I’d been to once before with them where we had fillet of red snapper, muy rico.  They are so full of life and know and like, or at least have such astute and well-expressed opinions about, so many people that it’s never dull in their company.  Now I’m back in my rooms enjoying the glow that comes after a few drinks and a good meal.  The sliding door is open to reveal the vast black of the Bahia des Banderas surrounded on three sides by the bright lights of Vallarta and also to let in the warm evening breeze and the incessant whirring of somebody’s car alarm.  It’s been going since I got home, but I feel so wonderful it only bothers me a bit.

I’ll jump back in time to my visit with Barb in La Penita.  It was good to see her.  She’s coping amazingly well; I think the complete break of a week with Faye in an all-inclusive gave her some much-needed change and rest that has enabled her to handle the details of the house that had to be looked into before the renters arrive very well.  We had some good chats and swims and were invited for drinks and dinners by many of her friends, so we were well entertained.  One of our swims was really amazing for me.  We swam with pelicans.  I’ve loved those birds since I first saw them; they seem to be the working- man’s bird.  They’re big and ungainly looking; they fly low over the waves like cargo carriers deadheading home with no worries, and when they rise up, sweep back their wings and dive deep for a fish, it’s breathtaking how svelte they are and how arrow-like they cut through the water.  And we were surrounded by them as well as by smaller terns, all plunging after a huge school of small fish that were everywhere, bumping into us and jumping out of the water around us.  I’ve thought for quite a while lately that the idea of making a bucket list was a recent fad and a mug’s game, but if I’d ever joined the ‘listers’ and made one, I should have put near the top, ‘swimming with the pelicans.’  I had another encounter with a bird while I was in La Penita, a blue-footed booby flew so close to me as I walked the beach that I felt either his wing or the air close to his wing touch my hair as he passed.  He settled on a rock nearby, which is how I was able to know that it was indeed a blue-footed booby.  

The car alarm is still disturbing the calm of the evening, which reminds me of another loud and crazy aspect of life in ‘el cento’ de Vallarta, the buses.  The taxi driver we had tonight said that the bus drivers here are the best in the world.  I don’t know what standard he was using to judge them by, but if it has anything to do with wheeling the most baffed-out, shockless vehicles at the highest speed possible around the most pothole-ridden streets imaginable, then I guess I concur.  They continue to rank among the world’s best.  Today I sat in the front seat of one of them for the drive from the main Vallarta bus terminal to the bottom of my street.  It was about a twenty-minute ride that at any amusement park would have cost much more than the 6.5 peso fare that I paid.  As we careened from passing lanes to turning lanes to stopping zones, the knuckles of both my hands turned white from gripping my suitcase with one and the chrome bar around the driver’s seat with the other.  But I arrived safely, even after the driver’s last passenger challenge, which was to carry on full tilt as if he was going to pass my stop, even though I was precariously perched by the door, until just beyond it when he braked hard and practically propelled me onto the road. 

Viva Mexico!!!!!!

Pelicans and terns diving for small fish off the point in La Penita

Barbara at work on the tenaca early in the morning

and at play later in the morning

Puerto Vallarta

It’s Thursday, Nov. 21, and in about 2 hours, I will have my 2^nd dentist appointment of the trip.  If all goes as planned, and it usually does with this guy, I will see him again at 9:45am on Friday and then not again until Sat., Nov. 30, when he will finish off the 2 crowns I need to fix my 2 broken teeth.  He’s an uncharacteristically on time and on task Mexican, which explains why he’s gone from a hole-in-the-wall on Juarez St. to the biggest dental clinic in Puerto Vallarta in just over 15 years.   I hope his dental work continues to be as professional as his business acumen is impressive.

I feel a bit like the Pollocks did during their brief stay in Hawaii, trying to balance beach time with medical appointments.  I guess we are seeing ‘the future in an instant.’  No more running barefoot through sand and surf for heedless hours.  In spite of bringing sandals and shoes that I thought would be perfect, I have had to buy bandages for blisters on both feet.  I have walked miles in the town and along the shore, but not without remembering to put on sun screen, bandages, long sleeves, visor and the cooling neck thing that Jay gave me 2 years ago in Korea and that I’ve worn every hot day since.  I think I might even splurge and buy a new one in a different color, if I see one and have money on me and don’t decide that it isn’t really necessary yet.  I don’t mind getting old because the pleasures I have are all that I can tolerate, but being in Vallarta where we first were 17 years ago reminds me at every turn that I have changed even more than the city has. 

As I am staying in ‘el centro’ at the Hotel Suites La Siesta (aptly named), I have easily walked past our first 2 homes here.  The first, Casa los Rapidos, on the banks of the Cuale is now a renovated mansion with 2 floors above the original one we lived in.  The 2^nd, Martin’s tower, has not weathered the years as well; it looks worn, and its location, next to the tri-weekly neighborhood garbage pick up zone did not improve its prospect as I passed it the morning of garbage day.  The boxes and bags of various sizes were spilling their contents, and as I stopped to take a better look at the old place, a noise in the pile revealed itself to be some critter that in jumping out caused the pile to spill it’s smelly mess even further into the street.  This morning was my longest walk; I went to the end of the beach, over the hill to Conchas Chinas and along to the last road that takes you up to the highway at the point where you see the sign for Calle Easy.  We first saw this with Brian and Cathy.  Unfortunately, a big blue ‘basura’ bin was in front of the sign, but as it was almost empty, I moved it, only to reveal a moiling mass of tiny ants.  I was bravely crouched down in front of them about to take a picture when the ‘battery exhausted’ sign flashed on the camera.  So I got up, replaced the bin and walked back along the dangerous narrow path beside Highway 2.  I dropped down into Olas Altas where I saw that the Blue Chairs Hotel has changed.  It wasn’t blue when I was last here, but the chairs still were.  Now they are much more numerous and green.  The hotel is being renovated and will soon be twice as many as it did.  The people hanging out, literally as well as figuratively, on the green chairs in their skimpy bathing suits are still mostly men, but there seemed to be more women and some couples.  Maybe it’s broadening its appeal to the whole GLBT gang.  I carried on to the little restaurant by the cathedral where I had the ‘comida corrida’ because I won’t be able to eat dinner after seeing the dentist tonight.

Hente imortante y menos importante en el dia de la Revolucion

Boyos taking it all in

Muy typico

Lucha Libre

Gutting fish near the new dock on Los Muertos Beach

I'm in Mexico but I can't make my Google account work so I can't contact anyone

All's well in Mexico, but I can't email on my Google account, the only one I have, so I'm trying this.

Two views of Vallarta and the Bay of Banderas taken from the balcony of my room

November 16, 2013

It’s almost 6:00pm on Saturday, November 16, 2013, and I’m all packed for Puerto Vallarta, I think.  I checked the weather there before I began and it was 80f., so I’m only taking light summer clothes. Consequently, I think I’ll have nothing but carry-on luggage; the heaviest item by far will be the laptop.

 I remember November in PV from our first year there, when Jay was in grade 10 at the American School.  We had arrived at the end of August so he could start school, and it was hot, hot, hot.  November was the first month that I truly loved; we had all our initial adjustment ‘issues’ worked out and the weather had cooled.  The month begins with the festivities of ‘el dia des los muertos’ and continues with the International Sailfish and Marlin Tournament which Jim and I enjoyed watching twice when we were there.  For this event, they also bring cultural acts from all over Jalisco to the island and parks, so there’s a lot happening in the evenings.  It’s not going to be the same this time, but I look forward to being there again because the memories it holds will somehow sharpen whatever the present offers, I think.  And I will fight the urge to find that now is a sad remnant of the good old days.

As I packed, I came across an old diary I had kept in 1986, when Jim, Jay and I spent our first winter in Mexico, in Cuernavaca.   I had to force myself to stop reading it, but before I did, I read two parts that made me laugh.  The first was a comment Jay made as we were walking home from having dinner at ‘El Pollo Loco’.  He was riding on Jim’s shoulders, quietly looking around as we discussed how we were slowly getting used to walking along endless lines of stone walls topped with broken bottles, in the deafening noise and fumes of avenida E. Zapata.  All of a sudden he said,  “Oscar would love Mexico, all the noise and dirt and paper blowing around.”   He was missing ‘Sesame Street’, among other things, like his ‘Masters of the Universe’ figures, most of which we had forgotten in a taxi when we first arrived in Cuernavaca.  Jay always admired strength, size and power.  He really liked Eleazar, the man who did all the heavy lifting of water and gas bottles in the area where we lived.  He thought Eleazar could probably do anything.  In fact, one time when I couldn’t answer his question and just replied, “Who knows?”, he instantly responded, “ God and Eleazar.” 

Today is dad’s 94^th birthday.  He was born in 1919, two years after JFK.  It’s hard to believe that this year is the 50^th Anniversary of the latter’s death. 

Yesterday and today, I went cross-country skiing up in the winter of Sovereign Lake and Silver Star, and on Monday I’ll be walking in the  heat of PV, “… a body sure do get around.”

Mo and John at Silver Star

Me with Mo at Silver Star

This guy was there too

Sunday, November 10, 2013

It’s a slow moving, rainy Sunday morning in Vernon, but at 1:00pm, Mo and John are going to pick me up to go cross-country skiing at Silver Star.  I don’t know if it will be as thrilling as Friday afternoon was, when Miriam and I overcame our urge to just go for coffee instead of driving up to ski at Sovereign, where we discovered a wonderland of deep snow on the trails and had a great short ski, but it might be.  Sovereign opened on Friday and Silver Star opens today.  It’s still hard for me to believe that on Oct. 31 I was biking and now I’ve been skiing in spite of the fact that there are still leaves on many trees in the valley and a couple of roses on the bushes in my yard.

A few years ago, the city of Vernon planted a tree in front of my house on the area between the sidewalk and the road.  It must be about 10 years old now.  I’ve always liked it, but it wasn’t until I saw the same trees when Jay and I were in a van driving to the Great Wall that I decided to find out exactly what it is.  Now I know.  I’ve not only googled it, but also consulted with Miriam’s husband, Bill, a gardening enthusiast.  It’s often called a ‘golden rain tree,’ but its real name is ‘Koelreuteria paniculata’.  Now,in the fall, it has hanging bunches of pods that look like tiny Chinese lanterns, and in the spring it has pendulous clusters of brilliant yellow flowers.  Meanwhile in the back yard, the leaves on the giant maple are clinging tenaciously to their branches, so I haven’t bothered yet to buy a long handled scraper to pull the fallen ones off the porch roof and then clean the eaves troughs.  I’ll do that next week before I leave for Mexico.

 I’m looking forward to going to Puerto Vallarta and La Penita, especially because I will see Barb Steers and Dick and Ellen.  It will be the first time that Barb and I have been back without Jim and Rod, so I’m sure there will be difficult moments, especially for her because Rod died so recently, but I think/hope that seeing each other in Mexico again will do us some good and bring back happy memories that will get us through some sad moments and slowly into our new lives.  I certainly haven’t had time to get sick of winter yet, but the warm ocean water and hot sun are always welcome.  Two or more dental appointments are less inviting but necessary, and as I am justifying this trip largely by telling myself that it will cost about as much as dental visits alone in Canada, I can’t complain.

I will end by saying that if you ever get a chance to see the Alberta Ballet, take it.  Last Sunday I went to the Vernon Performing Arts Centre to see them dance to the music of Sarah McLachlan.  It was wonderful.  They’re a big, young troupe, and the choreographer, Jean Grand-Maitre, is really creative.  Their moves are sometimes those of classical ballet and sometimes almost like a hoedown.  Most of the time the stage is a changing pattern of movement woven either sinuously slowly or buoyantly fast by the bodies of many young dancers.  I hope some day I will be able to see them dance the works Grand-Maitre created for the music of Joni Mitchell and k.d. lang.  Before the dance, the manager of the Arts Centre made her usual speech and thanked the local sponsors, but this time she added that Alberta Ballet had asked her to also thank their main sponsor, Enbridge Northern Gateway, not a well loved company in BC.  This is probably cheap advertising for them, but it certainly is money well spent.     

Fall colour in Vernon, larch among the spruce and pine

Halloween 2013

Last night the season of hikes, rambles and bikes officially ended with the VOC banquet.  The atmosphere inside was festive, but as we left it was raining.  It continued all night and through today, so that now everything is soaked, the cedars and roses should be happy but they don’t look it.  It’s a grey late afternoon; the only bright notes being the luminous yellow leaves that carpet the back yard and the shiny orange pumpkin left on the front porch, its screaming mouth dripping rain.

Thursday was Halloween.  I had decided to go on the final VOC bike ride but woke feeling lazy.  When I opened the blinds and saw the sun, I felt a bit more of an urge to get out, but what really gave me a kick start was opening my emails and seeing Jay’s Halloween picture.  He had said he was going to be a hobo and was less than enthusiastic about the whole thing when we last Skyped, so I really had a laugh when I saw what he finally was.  That got me up and out.  I even wore the bright orange cardigan mom and dad gave me for my birthday and tried to make myself look like a pumpkin.  I was the only one who even approached being costumed for the ride, but I was pretty pathetic.  My friend Sue took my picture but I deleted it as soon as I saw it.  Either I’m more ugly than I think or I’m the least photogenic person on the planet.  The bike ride was longer and harder than I had hoped; I walked up the last part of the longest hill.  But it felt great to be back with the gang, that is until I got really cold on the long, last leg downhill and on the flats.  I had got into such a sweat going uphill that I was shivering when we settled down in the Lumby Pub for lunch.  A hot bowl of potato and chorizo soup with a beer warmed me up.  I took pictures of some of the Halloween decorations in Lumby; they were as good as anything I ever saw in Mexico on the Day of the Dead.  When I returned home I opened May’s email to see her great leopard face, so the day began and ended with costumes from Korea.  I quickly cleaned and carved the pumpkin, phoned mom and dad to wish them Happy Halloween, filled a bowl with all my favorite tiny chocolate bars and sat down with a glass of wine and my Mexican cds to await the arrival of trick or treaters.  I had some cute ones, just enough to be entertaining but not eat all the chocolate bars.  

Jay the elf

May the leopard

A bar in Lumby

More Halloween fun in Lumby