A Gated Paradise

I fear the photograph, if not the title gives the game away: we are in range of WiFi and now Noa the owner has yielded the password, so we are unstoppable. From wandering souls lost in the wilderness we have come to roost lime proper RVers at a campground and for $20 (400 pesos) a night we are doing all right thanks.

A quick walk around the premises, the toilets the hot shower, the pool, the beach access and we settled in yesterday afternoon.

There are a few other vehicles in the campground including one yapping ankle biter on a leash which gives it the security to test Rusty's nerves. He's an old hand by now used to Mexican street dogs and he stays aloof from this pampered gringo dog as befits an old hand on the travel circuit. The Germans and Canadians haven't shown up yet and we have our own agenda anyway for the next couple of days. Make and mend, laundry and an a thorough clean of ourselves and Gannet2. 

We left our campground above the beach after we had swum in the cold Pacific Ocean and taken a cold fresh water shower under a hot sun. We packed the camp, which in our case doesn't take much and set off to seek out lunch in town a few minutes away. Our target was a fish restaurant on the beach overlooking the very boats that were bringing in our lunch. The cook was busy sorting the catch and we sat around and waited for a while as the kitchen got organized.

We waited a while in classic Mexican style with menus, no drinks and no chips or anything. Rusty took off for a wander and checked out the perimeter as usual wandering down the street, circling Gannet 2 as well as checking out Ron's Ford F350. He has got so comfortable being on his own I feel like a proud parent watching my kid go off to school.He handles the local dogs without any drama and he fits in like he's been in Mexico all his life.

I saw one local dog looking hopeful and there was no way I was going to enjoy lunch with her going hungry. I got our bag of street dog food out the back of the van. 

She had as much as she could eat and went back to lay out in the sun. Later she got tortillas and chicken strips before wandering off to find her equally desiccated owner. Most street dogs have homes and not all are hungry but non e are as well fed as one would like. Unfortunately that goes for a lot of Mexicans as well.

Our former street dog has got used to me handing out munificence and he watches with tolerant disdain. I just have to be careful not to show affection for the Mexican runts. He ignored the handouts. To me this is freedom, my dog wandering and sleeping under the table no hassles no leashes no drama. It is one of the most appealing parts of Mexican daily life to me the outsider.

It started out one way and ended up the other. There was no chance it wouldn't be delicious.

In the end we had to say goodbye to Ron who as driving to Mazatlan for the night before pressing on to see friends in Puerto Vallarta. We had a reseferation at the Celeste RV Park near La Cruz, 30 minutes north of Barras. 

We knew it was the right thing to leave the lovely spot not least because the weekend was upon us and already there were cars and SUVs coming into town bearing well dressed people from the city. Our private beach would be ours no longer.

The road out of Barras de Piaxtla was still a mess of course!

The hurricane this last summer washed the paved road away and pushed the guardrail into the bushes. A little gravel helps but staying awake is the most important driver's aid along these few miles.

We knew this was the state of the road so it was no surprise but it is still breathtaking how much wreckage is left to sort itself out. This is the paradox of Mexico, when things go wrong you sort yourself out, you cope, you make it work. If you screw up you have no one to blame but yourself. To me it represents the ultimate combination of safety, self reliance and taking responsibility for yourself. If you are an impoverished peasant there's no use complaining and if you aren't in apposition of power it will get repaired when its repaired. It's not fair but it's what you have to accept and learn to deal with as an outsider.

Google maps shows the back road joining the Highway 15D toll road and you'd expect a merge lane etc...not a bit of it! The dirt road just shows up and you point your car down the shoulder and get on with the business of merging. Its slightly disconcerting until you get used to it.

We had to cross the bridge to get to the other side of the freeway. Not fancy but it works!

And from the overpass we got a splendid view:

We stopped in little town before we reached the campsite and loaded up with drinking water, 20 gallons for $1:80 which we phoned into the tank in the by now usual way using a hose. Bruce in Arizona gave me the idea and we thank him every time we load water as it's so easy to watch gravity suck 40 pounds of water into the tank. Layne went shopping and I fed another street dog. This time I got yelled at because the dog had wandered to the wrong side of the street and was eating on the "wrong side." The dude screamed at the dog and walked off with my bag of dog food. I was slightly pissed off and I chased after him asking him if he'd paid for the dog food. he looked startled and said no and I said that's because I bought it and where did you put it? He handed it over and I went back to loading water in high dudgeon. If he didn't want the dog around fair enough but to walk off with my food was a bit much! Layne came back from the supermarket with two bags filled with $15 dollars of food and we were ready to kick back for the weekend.

The road to the campsite hadn't changed since we tried to stop there a few days ago, all packed sand and wilderness!

There may have been a tope (speed bump) out there but it was indistinguishable from all the other bumps. In Spanish "tope" is pronounced "tow-pay" but when either of su sees one we shout out "Tope" in the English way to make sure we slow down in time. They are a menace to all drivers and the best way to spot then is to watch what other drivers are doing. Sudden brake lights rise the cry of "Tope!" aboard Gannet2. 

I can't imagine driving these roads after some rain but when dry they are entirely manageable though we go less than twenty miles an hour to preserve the contents of our home.

An actual RV park for a couple of days. WiFi, a pool, restaurant delivery (!), easy beach access, no close neighbors, electricity and so on and so forth. Oh yes, there's the laundry, Layne's delight. We are snug for the weekend.

Hunting For Lunch

Yesterday was not entirely fruitful. The idea was to go for a swim with the man who introduced us to the concept of cold water swimming for pleasure and good health.   It was sunny at high tide, the water was pretty flat (and cold) so after we eventually got up and crawled out of bed we took the plunge. Gradually that is to say.

Not heroism on a grand scale but it feels good to have found the strength to swim in temperatures cooler than bath water. Florida: get thee behind me! Warm bath water? Who needs that? With the  puritanical immersion behind us we took cold solar showers thanks to the sudden absence of sunshine and set our beady little minds on a fish lunch in town.

There is some grotesquely malformed bureaucrat in the upper reaches of Mexico’s Department of Transportation who thinks it’s a really smart idea to build paved roads in rural areas but to stop the asphalt at urban limits leaving village residents to wallow in streets of mud and sand. Such perversion baffles me.

Barras de Piaxtla is a funny little town, dusty and quiet in the off season, as you can see, a collection of homes and shuttered businesses. And yet desirable. The sign above says the family owns the wreck and they aren’t selling or renting so stop asking! Mazatlan’s wealth is 40 miles away by Cuota (fast toll road) and Barras is a sought after weekend destination. Ron found this out by asking. 

The restaurant opens Friday for lunch, and its weekends only in winter so all will close by Sunday evening. Well bugger, that's not brilliant news when you show up hungry and ready for fish on Thursday! 

Our back up plan was Layne’s possibly famous tortilla sandwiches with turkey and cheese on spicy mayo at Café Gannet but first the lady at Richard’s Seafood advised us to check Giant Tacos (“Tacones”) on Main Street. Time to back the elephant up. Where’s Rusty? All aboard. 

Our ridiculously large suburban cruiser happily has front wheel drive and a narrow turning circle consequently it’s pretty easy to maneuver in tight Mexican villages and we made our way back whence we had come. 

One gets the feeling Barras de Piaxtla is not an easy drive in rainy season, a feeling confirmed when you see building materials used to fill in mud holes on the main drag. Further along the street our middle class sensibilities were stirred by these rather attractive units being built on cement pilings with parking spaces underneath. Barras is a middle class destination for some weekenders:
Or this if you have a hankering to live in a tiny Mexican fishing village:

Our second attempt at lunch fell flat:

Ron from Iowa was salivating at the thought of Ostiones (oysters) and he laughed good naturedly at my description of snot in a shell. Neither that delicious dish nor my fried fish delicacy was to be. All closed. Even the resident guardian failed to notice Rusty. 
Rusty hops out at each stop delighted to see and smell what’s what. Mexico is an endless adventure for him. 

We stopped on the way out of town for the vital lunch ingredients, corn tortillas and drove back to our spot for a bite to eat at Cafe Gannet. 

It was a gray sunless afternoon by then and all promise of summer sunshine was gone. So we each wiled away the hours in our respective vans out of the cold damp sea breeze. Ron has friends in Puerto Vallarta and after we seek out lunch a second time on Friday, he will be off south. We are heading to a campground 40 minutes north to spend the weekend doing laundry, cleaning the van, swimming in the pool and taking walks on the beach. That is the fantasy. The reality? Who knows as this is Mexico. 

A footnote: my apologies for the rather scattered editing and posting times lately. The culprit is not the intemperate drunkeness you might suspect on my part; rather it has been curiously indecisive internet service. It came, it went, it appeared to be back but wasn't and stuff got lost. I fear that some days this will happen as we wander hither and yon and I hope you will bear with me as I shall edit and post as efficiently as I can.

People Fishing

Meet Tonino and his grandson Yantzen. They came by our beach (“our beach”!) to say hello. Tonino owns the fishing camp palapa behind our van and he invited us to use them if we feel like it. Pretty decent. 

Toby is his dog who was glad of a cookie and two bowls of water after his run behind the motorcycle. Rusty inspected him and got suitably grumpy. Toby as a puppy was dumped by a military patrol camped here who left him behind when they moved on.  Tonino adopted him. 

Two other dogs showed up and we managed to get them some food despite Rusty’s irritation. They were sweet but shy and honestly not terribly hungry interestingly enough. 

Not a bad view, even though swimming is going to be awkward with swells and shallow water a long way out! Typical Pacific Ocean swells. 

Rusty and I went for a morning walk and I was intrigued to check out the approach road.  My eyes are glued to the surface when I drive these dirt tracks obviously but walking with camera I wanted to look around and see what I had missed. 

A slick use for trash bottles added to the tidy cared-for appearance of the first house we passed. No sign of life but Rusty wasn’t buying; he went no further worried no doubt about local dog ambushes. My tough scrapper. 

I met a guy sitting astride his motorcycle rather glumly so I said good morning (“Buenas!”) and he explained he was waiting for his buddy who dropped something while they were up the beach but didn’t seem to be coming back. His slump was explained by the fact they caught nothing. I forgot to make a picture till he was putt - putting off down the sandy lane back to his home in Dimas…

We decided it was time to air out the bedding and clean the sleeping compartment, known as a bedroom

to some of you wastrels with separate rooms in your mansions. 

Plus I got out my grabber tool from

my days in the hospital when I couldn’t pull up the blanket without help, never mind reach my distant cellphone while lying on my back. I wandered around the van picking up dorito packets and soda bottles, discarded masks and mysterious wads of paper towels. I had local support (basura means trash) as the sign said don’t dump or burn trash on my private property: 

It was a spot worth cleaning up for half an hour. For those of us from Up North watching Tonino unwrap a candy for his grandson and toss the wrapper on the ground is an act of vandalism. Around here it’s the cost of freedom. So I clean for my pleasure. In the US if you find trash and clean it up, the odds are even it will stay that way.  Here? Five minutes after we are gone it will revert. It’s a fact of Mexican life. 

Tonino came back and did a beach patrol on his feisty horse, clearly a local bigwig. He offered us the use of his fish camp shelters and grill fireplace behind our van. A decent sort I would say! 

We aired everything out, sorted our winter clothes and buried them in compartments under our bed and reversed our cotton sleeping bag for summer use. We have left winter behind. At last. 

Layne pulled out another of her innumerable tools and kitchen appliances and made smoothies for lunch. The temperature gauge in the cabin shows 95 degrees much cooled by Pacific Ocean breezes. 

Ron who we met in San Carlos showed up, the man from Iowa. The day devolved into much chat and lounging around. As you do. 

He had stopped on the way for beer and tortillas and happened across shrimp ceviche for his lunch. 

Our spot is Grand Central Station-everyone passes by here including two guys collecting…rocks? Later Tonino explained they were paving a parking lot with them. 

I immediately wanted to swap GANNET2 for their motor tricycle. 

Rusty is well settled into life as a traveling dog. A morning walk, an evening walk and a day of lounging around camp. He yawns in the morning as he used to when it was  time for our morning walk before my commute. Nowadays he yawns and Layne let’s him out to start his day earlier than us. His wild roots show all the time. He loves the outdoors sitting around watching the world go by. 

A new palapa (palm thatched hut without walls) was starting construction down the beach. My telephoto lens was at full stretch for this one: 

The sand is soft enough here to swallow a Promaster and soft enough to force them to park down the beach and carry the logs up the sand. Not easy work for these stereotypically lazy Mexicans- and not a sombrero in sight. 

Tonino came back on his bike accompanied by Toby and he picked up a log for his grill at his fish camp palapa behind our van. 

Some random dude going for a ride on a beach. Imagine being able to do this when you feel like in the US…

We are neither of us equipped for beach driving..,

Our old nemesis the foggy cool marine inversion layer above the cold waters of the Pacific is back. One of the reasons I left California for Florida. 

It looks like rain but after the sun has safely set the clouds blow off and the stars come out. 

And one final fisherman of the day boasting enormous success. Three fish- big smile, when off camera he was smiling like a man in love. 

There endeth another serene day at the beach aboard GANNET2. A trawling trawling slowly offshore. 

A young couple in love, I hope trawling all day in the beach. 

The internet signal gets weak sometimes here and screwed up my first attempt to post which I hope explains the pictures without words if you noticed them earlier. Also we are on mountain time in Sinaloa so even though ships time is Key West things happen a little later in my life now!