Duck Diving

 Layne's sister rented a large seaside villa just north of Zihuatanejo for ten days during the grandchildren's Spring Break. That this is also Semana Santa was a happy coincidence for us in that we can escape the worst crowds and fireworks and noise of the busiest holiday week in Mexico.  We did that by the simple expedient of parking at their rented place.

Geeta's youngest son and his wife are here, at the surfing spot where they met more than a decade ago and where they come back from time to time to surf the point at Saladita Beach. We aren't surfers and wouldn't normally seek out a beach with huge waves but under the circumstances we couldn't really just drive by.

We get to live in the van but this being a tropical beach we don't do much more than sleep in our own bed which is lovely of itself. The house has warm showers, WiFi,  a swimming pool and flushing toilets. So what would you do? Drive by and ignore the family? Of course not! Wash dishes using your own limited water supply? I think not. 

It's tropical living, with a massive terraced area with a kitchen, a sitting area (above) and shade during the day. There are small people present, known to some as grandchildren, but I think they have been warned to leave the grump bear alone when he seeks solitude and so far I have found sufficient seclusion to spend time at the laptop.

I can sit at the dining area table in the breeze, listen to the waves crashing and compose masterful essays for my web page. Not too shabby, and a cold glass of Bohemia at one's elbow doesn't hurt at all, I hope.

I got up just before dawn yesterday and slipped out of the van with Rusty and my camera for a beach walk. I was glad he walked with me at first along the beach, just the two of us at first, as we like it.

He had a hard time when we first arrived when the family took a walk toward the point on the beach. There are surfer rentals opposite the waves and their dogs came out in a group and intimidated Rusty, who very sensibly started for home. I went with him and met a few oddball characters on the strand one of whom took my picture for me with a complete stranger:

As a result of all that Semana Santa festivity I turned in the opposite direction when we left the house in the gray light of dawn, hoping we would have a quiet walk together. He came a short way with me, paused and turned back. I was scornful but Rusty was the smart one as it turned out. A leggy black dog, similar to a Doberman wearing a proper collar came barking at me from one of the large beach houses. I thought it might have been a former street dog taken in by a surfer and wasn't the least bit worried as it circled and barked. The owner came out and started yelling at it ineffectually and as I turned to him the dog ducked in behind me and tried to bite me, getting a mouthful of shirt instead.

"Uh, sorry about that," muttered the young imbecile trying to control his dog with his voice and ineffectual gestures. Not what I would call an apology or effective control so I picked up a stone and the dog understood that gesture and ignoring us both, the brute ran back to the house. This beach was not working for me and I got no decent dawn pictures either.

Well, bollocks.

Later in the day brother in law Bob said he wanted to go body surfing with one of those foam bath tub surf boards, the ones you use by lying flat on them dangling your feet and letting the wave carry you. I'd rather swim personally.

The Pacific Ocean is restless, and that's the reason I am looking forward to Baja beaches in a couple of weeks on the Sea of Cortez where Pacific swells and cold air will be absent. The water here is not very cold at all, especially now I have been trained to ignore cold water and to simply get used to it after a few minutes immersion.

The difficulty lay in the frequent dumps of heavy foamy salt water every few seconds or minutes as the surf rolled in. This is why we generally avoid surfer beaches. However I had watched my nephew Aidan hopping through the waves the day before and I gave that a try.

Yes I know it looks absurd but it was actually fun. I was standing in water no more than waist deep on firm level sand underfoot. The white water crashed...

I hopped, holding my nose as I am not fond of burning my nostrils and then took a few quick strokes toward the next wave. And so it went. Bob came up to me laughing as he had just caught a wave on his body board and he timed it so perfectly he rode it to the beach. He claimed I brought him good luck, which I was happy to accept though I thought it unlikely. For myself there was a new breakthrough, so simple so obvious it shouldn't need saying.

I got tired of hopping like a bunny rabbit so on the next crashing wave I waited till the last minute and went under. Completely brilliant! The wave passed overhead as a dark band, I felt the back of the wave with my raised feet and I popped up into smooth water and started swimming. That what I was doing is normal form for surfers gives you some idea of how little I know. And I lived twenty years in the surfing capital of Northern California (a disputed title!) in Santa Cruz.

Up came the wave, I pointed my waterproof Panasonic TS7 at it, then down I ducked...

And up I came to continue swimming in the smooth water behind the wave.

I enjoyed this pattern for some considerable time and eventually, reluctantly returned to civilization at the beach. Megan met me there and I told her of my discovery of how to deal with surf. Her eyes widened.

"You just this moment figured it out?" She high fived my discovery, it was a signal moment in my surf development.

Later at the pool Jessie explained that surfers call that maneuver the "duck dive" because you are ducking under the strength of the water and at the same time you look like a duck popping up from the depths. Apparently surfers also use a similar avoidance technique when they are riding long heavy boards and they call that the turtle roll. They flip on their backs and hold the board above them, and ride through the foam that way. Which maneuver he said does not always end well.

I swam some more in the afternoon and I tried to teach 5 year old Everett to swim, pushing through the fear in his eyes and after dinner, two pastas cooked by the sisters (Layne's was better of course though I ate plenty of both, in solidarity you understand)and we played Texas Hold'em. I lost which is all I need to say about that except that Megan won and she enjoyed it, the winning.

Which reminds me, I owe her 200 pesos. I think I had better go duck diving to drive the bitterness from my heart.

The Police

Among the many misperceptions gringos bring to Mexico is the notion that all police are corrupt and Mexican police are hopelessly so. It's odd to me inasmuch as a great deal of the corruption that does exist here as much as it does anywhere, is caused by drugs. The trade brings with it so much money, cocaine will corrupt anybody given enough time and money.

And ironically the consumers of the trade in cocaine and marijuana live north of the Rio Bravo del Norte, making the traders down here unconscionably wealthy. So much so the cartels are struggling to launder their money in agricultural products boosting the price of avocados and limes. They don't just trade in fruit, they hold a gun to your head and unless you pay their inflated prices you die. Everyone suffers from their interference. That's one way to run a business I suppose, terrify your buyers!

However if you come to Mexico as a tourist you will be warned all cops are on the take and will stop you for any reason to put their hands out. It just isn't so in our limited experience.

We have been through 44 checkpoints, local police, Guardia Nacional, Army and Navy road blocks, Agricultural Inspectors and Federal Fiscal police, not to mention one road block set up by the Zapatista rebels, and at none of them has anyone asked for money. Two in Chiapas and one in Tabasco State stopped us to chat about where we were from and where we were going to and do we really live in the van, and asked for nothing. One Border Patrol check next to the Guatemalan border in Chiapas did a very professional job of checking our papers just as the Border patrol in the US does along the Mexican border.

I like to be intercepted by people selling fried plantain chips wherever traffic is backed up, on topes (speedbumps) and Caseta de Cobros (toll booths) but of the police I have no fear and I expect nothing and indeed rarely do we old folks attract their attention. I suppose this has to be said too: Mexicans aren't lying in wait to murder, kidnap or rob you. Most people have lives and they live them.The consequences of violent crime, especially against foreigners will bring down all kinds of hell on their heads and they know it. There are thugs, and they are armed and as unpredictable as they are in the US, and of course there are the cartels who are violent business people who have no interest in tourists enjoying their stay in Mexico. If you come here expecting an armed camp you will be disappointed. Many a true word spoken in jest:

Bearing all that in mind let me tell you a little story about our drive to the coast on Maundy Thursday. No awful dog stories are involved in this incident but the police are. The photographs are not of first rate quality but they will I hope illustrate what actually happened and it is a story worth telling.

It was another cool morning in Pátzcuaro and we packed dup to leave. The kindly but inarticulate Mandarin speaks tin the pick up truck waved us away and all I felt was regret that I couldn't learn his story. To emigrate to Barstow California and not speak a lick of English is a story worth hearing. Never mind we had a drive to undertake.

If you think Mexico isn't suitable for large RVs take a look at our other neighbors, a reclusive mother and daughter who are ready to settle in Mexico and put traveling in a box behind them. They've chosen a pleasant town for their settlement so they have great taste, that I know! My wife too has excellent taste and before we left she wanted to pay a visit to a first class bakery on the zocalo in Pátzcuaro, forgetting that downtown was in the throes of the busiest week of the year. She jumped out of Gannet 2 while I paused ina. flow of traffic and went to buy the damned bread and forgot her phone. We were separated with no means of communication. 

To cut a very long story short Rusty and I ended up driving some hellish back streets in Pátzcuaro as I struggled to find my way back to the main square. The photo above was an easy alley, where I had a moment to snap a picture, the deeper I got into the neighborhood the more lost I got and found myself turning with no room to spare, backing into ditches and waiting for parked cars to move the spaces were so narrow. It was the most stressful driving I've done in Mexico and I came away knowing I can drive the Promaster pretty much anywhere in an urban environment. But I was stressed out and using all the rude words in my vocabulary. The old guy seated on the sidewalk who had to lift his legs out of the street not once, but twice as I got progressively more lost evinced no surprise at seeing me pass the first or second time. He was a gentleman and I thank him.

We got on the open road with a lot of delicious whole wheat bread (the onion bread of Layne's dreams was already sold out again so there was that small satisfaction). "You and your offing damned bread," I ranted in that vein for a while, relieved I hadn't scratched the Promaster or got inextricably stuck in pursuit of a banal loaf of bread, and we settled into a three hour drive to meet Layne's sister on the coast.

And then we met the backed up traffic. We were listening to a Michael Connolly lawyer story, corrupt police and prosecutors (in the US!) and secret FBI shenanigans and so forth. The traffic ground to a halt. Layne went to the toilet and made me a cup of tea and we ate the whole wheat as we sat in the line motionless. 

"Ohh," I said as I peered into the back shelf of the Prius stuck in front of us. "I wonder if they'd share their croissants?" I wondered out loud. The chaos in Pátzcuaro had caused us to miss breakfast at our favorite coffee shop which serves delicious French pastry with big foaming cappuccinos...The Prius family were armed for Holy Week festivities with a tray of flaky pastry sitting on the back shelf of their hatchback car, right under my nose.

We nudged forward making no real progress but cars were coming toward us so if it was an accident we had hope things were getting better and clearly it wasn't another citizen road block. We listened to the book and cranked the air conditioning. Rusty laid don on his cushion under Layne's feet. I finished my tea. 

Cars passed us in-between oncoming vehicles and the driver of the Prius gave them the bird until he gave up and joined in taking my pastries with him. But all was not lost. At a certain point I saw a couple of large trucks winding slowly down a dirt road next to a bridge over the toll road. They were, of all things, loaded car carriers and they inched their way down to the highway and took off heading the way we had come.

"Shall we give it a try?" I said to Layne figuring we could do no worse that try the Libre (the free highway that sort of parallels the toll road and winds slowly through towns and villages). So when we reached the spot where the trucks came out I turned across the road and scrambled our Promaster up the incline. A Michoacán Highway Patrol pick up was in the dirt by the side of the track giving directions and I stopped to ask the way to the Libre and he said go over the bridge and take a left. Okay then.

I drove around and up onto the bridge over the toll road. That was what we escaped, the back up to pay the toll several miles down the road.

And bear this in mind: the road we were about to take had been driven by at least two fully loaded car carriers, and that thought blew my mind once again. I'd like to see a US trucker take on these dirt roads and narrow bridges:

I found myself leading half a dozen cars through the dirt which Layne thought was hilarious, the foreigner  showing Mexicans how to get lost. We did reach the paved Libre highway despite our worst fears and it was at this point that my story takes a very weird turn. The police drove up and pulled alongside. 

"Follow me" the driver said, stretching his knowledge of English to the limit. I followed and we ended up in one more weird road trip to add to all the others. 

Not only did we follow him but so did a mixed assortment of other cars behind us and we became the Pied Pipers of the diversion. We paid a thirty peso toll on the bridge which I suspect included a gringo tax of ten extra pesos (50 cents US) for us. I saw the car in front hand over a blue note (20 pesos = US$1) to the toll taker and his wife but he told us it was thirty pesos which we cheerfully paid, hardly feeling like blaming them for taking advantage of the Semana Santa chaos on the highway.

The police car led us to the Libre and down the Libre barely a half mile and then abruptly turned off the pavement back into the dirt, waving at us to follow. So we, and the line of cars behind us promptly did the same. Imagine sitting in 96 degree heat in the back of a pick up truck serving as the village charabanc to take you and your family to the beach for the holiday. I looked at those people from the comfort of my air conditioned van and took my (imaginary) hat off to them. There was another informal toll booth at the road back to the Cuota (toll) road. The cops stopped and chatted and when it was our turn we paid another twenty pesos, with no gringo tax.

Rusty found this extraordinary caravan through the desert to be as fascinating as I did.

We wound through the scrub and saguaro and dust and made our way back to the horrible highway in a long line of cars. 

The police stopped and waved us on. I kept driving after thanking them profusely and followed the more heavily traveled road when we came to a junction in the dirt. It led to a white wall and I paused. Sod it, I said to myself, by now a self styled expert in the vagaries of Mexican roadways, I'll bet there's a way through. And indeed at the top of the hill, up which Gannet2 scrambled valiantly, we found a gap and drove through it. Down the incline on the other side (how did the car carriers drive this, I asked myself...) and we were back on pavement, on the ramp just past the toll booths!

The highway was open and off we went. The whole saga lasted maybe twenty minutes but it was a typically Mexican affair. Had we stayed put no one would have done anything other than watch us nudge forward slowly, but by taking an initiative and looking for a different way someone unexpectedly and uninvited stepped forward to give us a hand. No bribes, no tips no nothing but a big smile of friendship.

We are at the beach now with the family parked alongside the beach mansion they have rented for the next week. Lucky for us we drove Thursday as I suspect traffic will get progressively worse the closer we get to Sunday but we are tucked up with small children and supplies for the next few days. Not without incident I might add, as I have lost one shirt to a dog attack on the beach, so if this is Paradise it has it's own issues...

PS: If Bruce is reading this please check your e-mail as we only have a form of WiFi here and if you don't get an iPhone like all sensible people I can't text you. There is no phone signal in Paradise either it turns out and I hope the WiFi at the mansion stays working.  For Bruce I have this news, an improvement suggested by him for our water siphoning has arrived with the family (as have more Yorkshire Gold tea bags and just in time):

Holy Week In Pátzcuaro

Semana Santa, the week leading up to Easter Sunday is a huge holiday in Mexico.  It’s the type of week that makes tourism operators drool while causing peace and quiet types, gringos mostly, to curl up their toes with dread. 

It’s a fact that most Mexicans who can take time off like to spend the week at the beach packed like sardines eating copiously and drinking  all with competing musical sources creating the sort of cacophony that makes me fear Hell may be a sound booth gone mad. 

In Pátzcuaro a mountain town we enjoyed on our way south the city has covered over all four sides of the main square and given it up to shopping. This is pure heaven for Lsyne who walked and touched and talked and bargained and bought enjoy small gifts to fill a plastic bag to be stowed aboard GANNET2. 

I followed gallantly along but Rusty copped out and let us know he was tired and wanted to stay aboard and rest. 

Hed already been walking a lot so it was fair enough. And we had a place for him to sleep because we’d found a parking spot in the heart of the action! 

In the evenings we have heard a few fireworks but since Rusty hung around with some campground dogs that paid them no mind he has got over his fear of bangs. One more positive thing he has gained on this trip so far. 

I figured the cops had pulled easy duty standing around at the fair! They were chatting and eating in a group as cops do separate from the civilians around them. You’ll see these trucks on the highways one officer standing up behind the machine gun. Gringos tend to get fearful but I find the Guardia Nacional professional well equipped and keen. Not that I have had much to do with them. They use radar but we are always well under the limit!

I had just been telling Layne in one of our long driving conversations when audio books are off that I don’t like fennel. I don’t like aniseed flavored food. Well I thought that was the case. This woman made delicious corn soup with anise. It was surprising and rich and delicious. Nowadays I have to say I dislike most anise flavored foods. 

In many respects it was a day at the county fair. We strolled and touched and tasted and watched the people. She was stopped to pray because it is Holy Week but for most it seemed this was simply  a little time off:

And for us it was some people watching. Not Mexicans, just people having a good time. That all the snowbirds have gone home surprised us but I’m not sure we saw any on the zocalo. 

With the usual warnings in place. 

And so back to the campground. One neighbor speaks only Chinese and has no patience with Google translate. The others in the big RV are a mother and daughter who live inside and only come out to smoke. They are waiting to complete their home purchase. We on the other hand are getting ready to move. 

The rest of the week is at the beach with Layne’s sister and her extended family who have rented a house in Mexico. We get to park in the drive, use their showers and washer while sleeping aboard GANNET2. Perfect.