Mornings in Yelapa 6

The longer April and I stay here, the more we realize that the two cultures in Yelapa exist like parallel universes. The oldest gringo residences here know quite a bit of what`s going on in the native community while having to shrug their shoulders at some aspects of it. Even those who have married into the culture, I suspect, don't know all its ins and outs. It's kind of like the mysteries one experiences of the opposite sex -- compounded by the various degrees of culture clash. Then there are gringos like yours truly, whose command of the language is virtually nil. My wife knows quite a bit of Spanish, though it's probably only enough to communicate in what must sound to a Mexican like babytalk. Me, I speak in one-word or single phrase "sentences."

One material aspect of Yelapa's gringo-Mexican clash has to do with the handling, or mishandling, of garbage. There's been some attempt in Yelapa, led by gringos and some enlightened natives, to compost and/or recycle waste. But the burning of waste goes on, including the burning of plastic (plastic has long since replaced the native shopping baskets women once carried to market as containers) with its noxious, carcinogenic fumes. Respiratory ailments are common, particularly among the children. Attempts are ongoing to outlaw the practice. Yet, as in the United States and Canada, convenience often rules. There's the inconvenience of having to haul one's garbage to the pier or to the beach for pickup by the boats that will haul it to Boca de Tomatlan for compacting; besides, there's a charge for the service. Why spend money when you can simply burn your waste, including your plastic, in your back yard?

There may be a partial solution to this problem after the February 25 benefit to raise money to create a job for someone in the native community to collect garbage for periodic disposal. Tickets for the benefit, which reportedly will include a delicious meal, have been selling for two hundred pesos. That cost, of course, will insure that few natives will attend. Nevertheless, the word is definitely out about the importance of garbage disposal (has been, in fact, for years, but awareness had lapsed) and the health hazards of burning plastic. Funny thing is that Mexicans tend to be very clean personally, keep their houses neat and clean, wash the cobbles or wet down the dust in front of their houses, etc., daily, and yet, throughout Mexico, there`s this indifference, this acceptance of litter outside one`s domicile.

You may wonder why I`ve posted no pictures from Yelapa. Believe me, I`ve tried. But the dial-up connections are simply too slow to upload pictures, so unless I haul my laptop into Vallarta, where there`s fast Internet, I`ll have to wait until I`m back in Canada, sitting at my desktop computer, to add pictures to these foreign postings.

Not that I`m looking foward to the end our Mexican sojourn. That`ll come soon enough, and I can wait.

P.S. Since writing the above, I've returned to Canada and my desktop computer and have added some pictures to these postings.

Mornings in Yelapa 5

Yesterday was the annual Valentine Day's celebration in Yelapa, including the windup, I think, of the croquet tournament at Jerrod's place, Los Naranjos, and the costume ball last night at -- this year -- the Oasis upriver (traditionally it's been held at the Hotel Lagunita on the beach). The ball is a ball. Virtually everyone in the gringo colony participates (we've obstained so far), coming out in really crazy, inspired costumes. There's a contest, in which contestants prance before the judges to hoots and hollers from the onlookers, and prizes of up to 25,000 pesos (US$250) are awarded to the winners. Top win last night went to a group of gay, nearly naked young men, dressed spectacularly in masked helmets, feathers and boas (they looked like tropical birds) and calling themselves ^Fag Team Wrestlers,^who engaged in a mock wrestling match as the delighted crowd nearly raised the palapa roof off with their cheers.

There was disco dancing afterwards that had April and me on the floor for a wild number or two; then we pulled out our flashlights and headed back through the darkened village to our apartment up in the jungle. Got home about 11 p.m. The party went on, I think, until after midnight.

The night before we'd attended the birthday party of one of the old hands down here that, for crazy dancing, rivaled the Valentine's Day shindig and Wednesday and Saturday night disco at the Yacht Club. Truly wild, man. These Yelapinos indeed know how to party -- most of whom are aging Baby Boomers, some ex-flower children, all still capable of wiggling their asses.

So the good life continues here. This morning was, oh God, the start of another beautiful day in paradise.

Mornings in Yelapa 4

We´re in Vallarta today, mainly for me to see a doctor about my infected hand. Get a cut or abrasion here in the tropics and, unless you treat it as already infected, almost certainly it´s going to get infected within a day or so. I had the misfortune to fall while climbing down a steep jungle path in Yelapa a week ago -- a week ago! So the doctor I saw this morning took one look at my hand and told me it was "very infected" and prescribed penicillin twice a day for five days by injection. Then I went to a farmacia and filled the prescription at a cost of some $35 US. The visit to the doctor cost about the same. Mexican health care, by the way, is reportedly one of the best in the world.

Our weather has wonderfully improved. Yesterday there wasn´t a cloud in the sky, it was gloriously hot and sunny, and we went to the beach. But because of my injured hand, I couldn´t go swimming. Ah well. Just basking in all that heat and light after a month of mostly cloudy weather was enough: what we came here for.

Little by little, through talking to Yelapa residents, we´re getting a feel for the community -- its pros and cons, family squabbles, environmental concerns -- what lies beneath the surface, in short, in what appears to the day-trip tourist as a paradise without serpents. Paradisal Yelapa has its serpents, all right, but it remains a paradise to us gringos.

Mornings in Yelapa 3

We've been in Yelapa a month already; two more to go. I've wanted to post regularly in my blog, but the Internet connections here are primitive, to say the least. Painfully slow and infinitely frustrating when they're working, and often they don't work at all. Periodically we go into Puerto Vallarta, where you can find fast Internet connections on almost every block, and where you often find a fellow Yelapino sitting at the machine next to you, enjoying the splendid service as much as you.

January's cool, cloudy weather seems to have left us, finally, and we can perhaps look forward to normal, dry season weather now -- that is to say, beautiful weather, what we came here for. Keeping my fingers crossed. However, there's no doubt (just talk to the old expats, the natives, down here) that so-called climate change is a reality. The fishing has noticeably deteriorated in the three years we've been coming down here.

Anyway, my wife and I are keeping busy. I write on my novel every morning, and April practices Qgong. She's starting a class in it this Thursday morning, and I'm reading Thursday afternoon from my about-to-be-published memoir (the opening chapter, all I have with me in hard copy), thanks to my wife's proud promotion of her husband. We'll both use restaurants as our venues, April at the Pollo Bollo on a day it'll be closed, me at the Vortex after its 4 p.m. closing for the day. We'll put up posters around time later today.

So it goes here. We gringo residents offer our services and/or talents to one another when and how we can, often for a modest fee (April will ask for donations to teach Qigong; I, however, must read for gratis. What the hell).

So long for now from paradise.

Mornings in Yelapa 2

The days slide by here. They´ve been taken up, so far, with showing visitors around. First our daughter Alicia, whose two weeks with us have passed; we put her on a plane back to Spokane, and thence to home in Nelson, on Thursday. During her time with us we also had my brother Mike and his Mexican wife, who´ve since gone back to their home in Cabo. Now we have his twin brother Mark and his Columbian wife, staying in Vallarta this month but out here in Yelapa with us for the weekend. All of this has prevented me from writing much, but starting Monday I should be on track.

Last night April and I, with my brother and his wife, were at the Oasis, enjoying the music in that outside restaurant, when the power went off (a frequent occurence in Yelapa), and we had the adventure of making our way across the darkened pueblo with flashlights (everyone carries a flashlight here when going out at night) to our casa. Climbing the stony path our casa, it began to sprinkle, then, just as we made it under our roof, it began to rain in earnest, really pour, though this is supposed to be the dry season. Must have rained for a couple of hours as my brother and I sat on our back balcony and talked until midnight. This morning we woke to a cool freshness after the rain and a greener jungle, washed clean of its dust. The day has remained cool and cloudy, though, and we look forward to the sun´s return tomorrow.

Yesterday, before the rain, the mouth of the Tuito, the river that empties into Yelapa´s bay, was closed -- by the sand washed up by the breakers -- and the lagoon, consequently, was flooded. Then last night, on account of the rain, I guess, the river broke through again, making a wide, deep channel into the sea and emptying the lagoon. So it goes. The sea will again dam up the river mouth, and again the river will break through. When the river is flowing into the bay, you have to wade across it to reach the beach, the playa. Just another adventurous aspect of living here.

Adios for now.

Mornings in Yelapa

Finally getting to my blog since arriving in Yelapa, Jalisco, Mexico, last Saturday. We're well settled in by now, comfortably set up in the Casa Emilio where we have the same little apartment above our landlady's house in the jungle above the village that we rented last year. It feels like home; that we never left it.

Our 20-year-old daughter Alicia is with us for two weeks (one week almost gone already), and she sorely misses her boyfriend Adam, whom she left back in Nelson, B.C. Spends a good deal of her time on the Net, emailing him, and in addition spends her money on phone cards so they can hear each other's voices.

Almost from the moment we stepped onto the pier in the central village we began to meet old friends and acquantances, gringo and native alike. Everybody friendly, everybody welcoming. This is our third year here, and we're beginning to feel like, and be accepted as, Yelapanos.

The weather's fine, warmer than last year at this time. As the season progresses, of course, it'll get warmer, until by the end of March, when we're ready to leave, it'll be good and hot.

But I've titled this Mornings in Yelapa, and they are lovely. At the inkling of first light, the roosters start up all around us. We try for more sleep until about eight, when it's completely light and the sun is peeping over the mountains. Then we throw open the doors to the front and back balconies and prepare and eat our breakfast on the back balcony, where we have a little kitchen, including a new four-burner gas stove this year (replacing the two-burner electric hotplate we had last year). Then we pull open the trap door that shuts us in at night, so that my wife and daughter can climb down the ladder to the ground and sally forth to what and wherever while I stay home and write until lunchtime.

We eat our first two meals "in," then the evening meal, usually, "out" -- that is, in one of Yelapa's several restaurants, where often there's music provided by the several musicians in town.

Back at our casita, all three of us write up our journals, then read for a time before turning in to the sound of insects in the jungle, barking dogs and yowling cats periodically, and sometimes very loud Mexican music.

The above picture is of part of the central village as seen from the pier.

My Father Behind Me

I turned 72 yesterday, and today I've been thinking of my father, who died, at 76, in 1987. As the saying goes, I hardly knew him, though we worked on our farm together, in the barn or in the fields, nearly every day when I was growing up.

Almost the last time I spoke with my father, by phone, from our respective homes in British Columbia and Minnesota, he expressed disgruntlement at not being able to work anymore. He'd worked hard physically all his life, and now, like a betrayal, his body was failing him.

I'd been talking to my mother when I asked how Dad was. After a couple of years of ignoring chest pains and breathlessness, he'd finally gone to a doctor. That led to by-pass surgery and a few months’ respite. Now, he was suffering angina, having to pop nitro-glycerine pills, and finding his prescribed aerobic walks a daily torture. Just walking down the block in my parents’ suburban Minneapolis housing development exhausted him.

"He's on the other phone," my mother said. "Why don't you ask him yourself?"

"Hello, son," he spoke up now--from the bedroom, I guessed.

"How are you, Dad?"

"Aw, I'm not worth a shit anymore."

His voice was weak, gravelly.

"I'm looking forward to seeing you, Dad. I'll go out with you on your exercise walks. We'll be able to talk."

I was looking forward to some talks together, and maybe he was too—the kind of talks a father and son never seem to have while the son is growing up, talks my father could never have had with his father, an expatriate American and a CPR engineer, who was killed in a train wreck during a blizzard on the Saskatchewan prairie when my father was five. My father’s widowed mother, then, with his two brothers and a sister, had moved from Moose Jaw to Minneapolis to live with her aged father.

"I hope so," he said.

A month later--and two weeks before our scheduled flight to Minnesota for a two-week visit—he was dead.

What I remember now, what seems to typify him, was the rolled-up wool sock he'd stuff into his left shoe to replace the missing half of that foot, lost to the instep in a farm accident. There's a snapshot of my father on crutches, taken a month later, just home from the hospital, that notes the date: Sept. 8, 1943. He’d spent his 33rd birthday in the hospital, fighting gangrene (one of the new "miracle" drugs, penicillin, saved him). I was eight, and in the Catholic school in a nearby town that frightful day of his accident. I remember my regret at having missed it.

He might have bled to death that day, might have gone deeper into the knives of the machine that took corn stalks, chopped them into bits and blew them into the silo, if my uncle Gerry (he and my father were farming together) hadn't been there to think quickly and reverse the machine, then run to the house for my mother and my folks' car. My uncle had driven to the doctor, my mother rigid and silent in the front seat beside him, my father rocking and silent in back, white but conscious, gripping the towel wrapped around his mangled foot.

I remember his shoes, the left one turned up at the instep, which together with his slight limp always told of his accident. A year after he was dead and in his grave, I found a pair of his dress shoes (his church shoes) in the trunk of my mother's car, the one shoe turned up like his mark left in the world, and felt my throat tighten, felt his loss even more than I had at the sight of him laid out in his coffin. What moved me then, as I stared down at his body, were his hands, his gnarled, working man’s hands, crossed on his chest.

I think of him now when I'm working outside, working with my own hands. I feel his eyes on me as I strike a nail. I sense his presence as I wield an ax, use my chainsaw, split firewood that will keep my wife and me warm in the winter. All those years we worked together and I tried to keep up with him and seldom could. I still want his recognition. I still work for it.