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 Vallarta Living | December 2005 
Vivendo en Mexico (Living in Mexico) 11
 Korah Winn - PVNN
This past weekend I was fortunate enough to be invited by my neighbor Manuelita to go visit her family in Las Palmas. Las Palmas is a little pueblo (town) north of Puerto Vallarta. It takes about a half an hour by car or an hour by bus. We took the bus. The pueblo has a nice little town square which gets a lot of use. One thing that I am really coming to appreciate in México is the sense of community.
There is not as much of a rush here to constantly have to produce produce produce. It is common for me to come home from my flamenco dance lessons and find numerous people sitting outside of their homes having conversations with each other and the people who pass by. It is cooler in the evenings and people sit and enjoy the change in temperature. They watch their children or grandchildren play futbol (soccer) in the street in front of them.
We do not really have backyards in the neighborhood I live in so it is enjoyable to see the improvisations that people make. Little fiestas (parties) are held in patio areas out in front of the houses because that is the coolest place to have a group of people.
That same sense of community was definitely in Las Palmas. I was walking around with Manuelita for awhile and it seemed as though we could not go three feet without there being someone she knew. We would stop and say hello and then walk another couple feet and repeat the process.
It was a Sunday and there were tons of people outside of their homes chatting with each other and just kicking back in general. For a long time, Las Palmas was very isolated because it was higher up in the mountains and there were only rough roads to travel to get there.
My friend said that now that there is better transportation, many of the youth travel an hour to Puerto Vallarta everyday to work and then come home in the evenings. Things have changed a lot in her pueblo. She said that when she was younger she worked in the campo (country). She moved to Puerto Vallarta because there were many more opportunities for work in the city.
When we finished walking she introduced me to her family. Her father and mother own a little tienda (store) that sells cold soda and cerveza (beer).
We all sat and chatted for a while and they showed me a type of fruit I had never seen before. Their yard was incredibly interesting. They had all kinds of different plants and animals there. They actually keep a cerdo (pig) in the back area and they feed him the food the have left over from meals.
When the cerdo gets big enough they have their very own home grown source of pork. They also have beautifully plumed gallos (roosters) running around.
Manuelita's family was so kind to me. They fed me lunch and we made as much conversation as my Spanish skills allowed. After lunch, Manuelita's sister Fichi showed me some piñatas she is making. These are the real things. In the middle of them is a clay pot. There are decorated cones that come out from all sides of the pot. I had never seen the process of piñata making before.
We were all pretty tired after having a big afternoon meal so we took a quick siesta and then got up to walk around town for awhile and go get paletas (popsicles) to finish out my time in Las Palmas. ¡Salud!
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