 |
|
|
 Vallarta Living | January 2006 
Taking Time to Relax and Learn While in Mexico
 Beth Ashley - Marin Independent Journal
| | Sunset in San Pancho. |
A tiny fishing village at the edge of a jungle by the Mexican coast. How does that sound as a place to vacation?
My sister Faith's sons have built two houses in the Mexican town of San Pancho. When the first house was finished, I was invited to spend a free week there, an offer I couldn't refuse.
San Pancho is a $50 taxi ride north of Puerto Vallarta.
My nephew's casa is a bright-yellow jewel box, filled with tropical plants and south-of-the border artifacts. I had the upstairs suite - a huge bedroom looking out over a little creekbed and the shacks of a family of squatters.
A quarter-hour after our arrival my friend and I had locked ourselves out on a rooftop patio. Frantic cries and some artful pantomime brought a nearby worker inside the house and upstairs to the rescue.
The rest of the week was stress-free. We napped, sat by the pool, drank pi a coladas, explored the town, ate shrimp and mahi mahi, and watched the ocean roll onto the nearby beach. I read two books: "The Year of Magical Thinking" by Joan Didion, "My Detachment" by Tracy Kidder, marvelously authentic descriptions of real-life events.
My friend and I are friends from college, older than I'll mention right now.
Within days, we were sure everybody in town knew who we were and where we were staying. Our house was at the end of a long smear of dirt that may someday be a road. To access it, cars cross the curb and the sidewalk, and bump every which-way to the end.
After late-night dinners we would call a taxi to get home. We always got the same taxi, a dusty red car that made grinding noises and was driven by a grizzled old man who could barely see over the wheel.
By the end of a week, we had visited most of the shops and eaten at most of the restaurants. We smiled at the children and chatted with the shopkeepers and stepped over a passel of slumbering dogs. Every walk downtown took us past a tiny park where old men sat on iron benches staring out at non-existent traffic. Young men in cowboy hats rode by on horses.
Everyone we met was warm and polite. We fell in love with the children. At the beach, a Huichol woman selling beaded bowls and bracelets nursed one baby while watching another at play.
Once, we took a taxi out to the fancy houses and hotel at Costa Azul, and on another day my friends Jan and David from Mill Valley drove us to Sayulita to eat lunch, watch tourists on surfboards and take pictures of gaviotas and pelicans skimming the waves.
At one point, I became aware that I was an outsider in their country, as so many Mexicans seem to us here.
I was aware that they worked very hard - one man worked on his farm during the week and drove taxis on the weekend. Workmen erecting a new house next door were slapping down tiles before I woke up in the morning. Those without regular jobs served tacos from stands on the street, or roasted chickens for sale on an outdoor fire.
We are changing their lives by our very presence - buying $25 dinners, transforming dirt patches into populous streets.
In Marin, Mexicans change our lives, too: They create new neighborhoods and a new culture; they provide cheap labor that benefits us all.
Our destinies are intertwined.
I hope we are as sweet to them in our country as they are to us in theirs. |
| |
|
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us