We went to town yesterday to eat an expansive brunch on the beach in Zihuatanejo at a place much favored by my sister in law. The food was good, eggs,beans,sauces and so forth and the service was attentive but the wait staff addressed us in English and our restaurant was serving only foreigners. I felt my search for authenticity was somewhat overridden by circumstance. I ate and drank my Americano coffee and enjoyed the view of Playa La Ropa, the city’s prettiest strand.
Paradoxically the menu was printed only in Spanish so translation was in order. I don’t much like resorts or inclusive vacations as a rule but the sense of timelessness they carry with them was rudely interrupted by the need to catch a flight for the young man in the yellow wife beater. He had school pending so breakfast with feet in sand and Rusty snoozing under the table ended up being rushed. Even when I pretend to aspire to all inclusive resort vacations I fail at them. We drove to the airport in a hustle.
It was a hot day at the beach, so in the city itself, at the supermarket the van’s thermometer registered 96 degrees. As the family shopped Rusty and I walked the streets hopping from shady patch to shady patch slowly circling the huge Mega Soriana supermarket block.
The plan had been to walk the city and have dinner and drinks in town, a more sophisticated version of how we travel. We would have been urbane visitors from another planet for the day, not a couple of gypsies seeking our fortunes in a house on wheels.
The heat defeated the plan. I was instructed to head for home after groceries were loaded and our fridge was full. We stopped for gas on Highway 200 and Rusty amused the workers by jumping out and sitting in the shade away from the infernal machine. He doesn’t like the van I said, stating the obvious. He prefers the van to being left behind but he likes jumping out when he can.
Traffic was heavy as the Semana Santa national holiday week wrapped up. We got in line on the highway for a ten mile back up of traffic waiting to pass through the toll booth to take the highway into the mountains. A few cars got impatient and took cuts, my sister in law sitting under the roof air conditioning in the back lamented her fate as though we weren’t entirely comfortable and I sat behind the wheel in a weirdly zen frame of mind. It was three o’clock, we would soon reach our turn off, well before the damned toll booth that was holding everyone up, and there was a swimming pool waiting for us, the lucky foreigners.
We stopped to buy roast chickens for dinner, and I managed to avoid taking a Tope (speed bump) in the village at full speed as I had in the morning, so all was well, we arrived without a chorus of groans and complaints from the back. Young Aidan’s flight to North Carolina was canceled in Houston and we got an anguished call from the nervous traveler stuck in a strange city. As we settled in for a night of margaritas and Spades (my partner, below, and we won, thank you),
…we shared travel stories of getting stuck in strange places in our youth and how much we enjoyed the sudden change in routine. I was 11 when my flight was delayed for three days by fears of conflict between Pakistan and India in 1969, and I lived in a luxurious hotel in Calcutta for the time guarded by Sikhs at the doors and monitored by a beautiful woman in a sari who stole my travelers cheques. I saw my first dead bodies in the streets and I smelled cremation pyres on the banks of the Ganges and I was submerged by beggars and the smells of poverty and pollution in a city barely able to cope. In the modern way I got in a plane finally and was whisked away to a month of luxury on a school friend’s tea plantation where I was waited upon in every way and I learned to swim in a vast swimming pool in the colonial atmosphere of privilege. The dead of Calcutta were still dead on the sidewalks but I was very much alive on the tea plantation.
I found the same sense of colonial privilege among the vast seaside mansions of La Playa Saladita. In Jesse’s memory it is where he met his wife as they camped, penniless, chasing waves. Now it is home to elderly surfers dreaming of past glories but unwilling to live without the conveniences of home.
The separation between Gabacho surfers and their fenced lives of luxury is stark. Warning signs are in Spanish only. Keep Out. The book exchange is in English.
It’s another way to enjoy Mexico and I can adapt.
But I am glad we are on the road again in our own bubble of privilege, all sixty square feet of it backed by the almighty dollar, and my sense of wonder at it all and appreciation for my privilege. Much nicer here than Calcutta.
