I’m guessing I was an adventurous sort even at the young age of 13, leaving California and friends didn’t seem to upset me much.
We crossed the border at Tijuana on July 25, my thirteenth birthday. We drove down in our Peugeot403, towing a small box trailer full of basic needs and a few cherished belongings. Our destination? A west coast fishing village in the tropics called, San Blas, in the state of Nayarit. You hear about people getting sick, commonly referred to as “turista,” their first trip to Mexico, and I was no exception. I had only been there 2 or 3 days. We were still on the road traveling and adventurous me had to try the turtle soup in a restaurant in Guaymas. Who is to say, it might not have been the soup — but it would be the first and the last time I had turtle soup. (It is now unlawful to kill turtles in Mexico.)
When I wasn’t lying in the back seat, sick as a dog, I was sitting up and all eyes for most the 5 day road trip. We stayed a night in Navajoa Sonora, in the El Rancho Motel. It actually looked like those along 101 in California. It still does today. (This where one leaves the main highway to go East to old Alamos.) Before arriving in Mexico, there were numerous things I had never seen before. like thunder and lightening. We stopped to rest in Culiacan. it was nearing the end of the day as I stood watching.in the hallway looking out the 3rd floor windows. It was so incredibly Loud, with amazingly bright flashes, and it rattled the windows. I could not recall ever a time in Palo Alto when there was such a show of nature as this.
Sadly, There were dead dogs and occasionally even dead horses in the roads or at the edges, sometimes swarming with vultures. There were packs of snarling, fighting dogs in the villages. There were poor, raggedy clothed people in some of the streets, some begging, some disfigured or crippled. I had never before seen people living in grass shacks. Or seen incredibly worn-out old cars and trucks barely chugging along, some actually going a bit sideways down the road like a crab! I’d never seen a herder walking his cows or goats down the middle of a road before. And burros! No, I couldn’t recall seeing a donkey before. Nor a creaky, home-made wooden wagon pulled by one, or by a mule. I‘d never seen papayas, mangoes, or banana trees. I’d never eaten jicama, tasted tamarindo, or drunk agua de jamaica or arroz, a sweet beverage made from rice.
We stayed a couple days in the coastal city of Mazatlan. Mom had made a friend there from a past trip, a well known lady in town who owned a big gift shop called “El Burrito” on the Olas Altas. The tourist section of town with a small beach. We stayed in a posada a couple blocks back from there. (This area is now considered the historic part of Mazatlan). Mom liked the market in Mazatlan, and the big plaza with purple jacaranda trees. Mom was entranced with the colorful trees and flowers in Mexico. She was snapping pictures of the brightly colored trees and bugambilias everywhere we went. We bought my first pair of huaraches in the market in Mazatlan. Old style huaraches with the tire tread rubber soles that are now getting harder to find.
Leaving Mazatlan on the coast and continuing South, one begins to notice how green and dense with vegetation it is. The tropics! About halfway to the turnoff to San Blas, one comes to a crossroads, a busy “crucero”, the turnoff to Túxpan. Trucks laden with all types of fruits are parked here and there. Buses of several sorts and sizes pickup and drop off people and their personal loads of what-have-you, chickens, fruits and vegetables and kids. Open air, thatched roof restaurants are cooking up the good stuff. Men, women, children, carry any number of small bird cages, with live, colored tropical birds for sale. They approach our car. We gaze in awe while Pop shakes his head no, and smiles. Mom oohs and aws at the darling birds, hopping back and forth in their prospective cages. We want to buy them all, then go down the road a ways and set them all free. At a later visit, my mom and I did just that. Bought a couple birds and set them free down the road.
The 22 miles more from the turnoff to San Blas has me sitting up all the way. Tiny villages, mud and thatched houses, peasant-looking, mostly dark-skinned people wave to us as we pass. We go slow now as the road is much narrower and more alive with people and animals. The country is lush and the bushes on the road edge extend into the roadway. Arriving at a small river, we actually drive across the bottom through a couple inches deep of water. Along the banks on the large rocks are women and girls washing clothes, while children splash and play in the water. As we near San Blas, lagoons, marshes and mangrove swamp make appearances on either side of the road, and exotic birdlife are abundant. At the edge of San Blas, we cross a small bridge over an estuary. A group of mostly bright colored dugout canoes are visible, resting on the muddy shore. Some are rigged with motors. A large barbeque is spewing smoke a few feet down the way as fish are grilled over wood coals.
I remember the first place we stayed upon our arrival in San Blas. A very basic hotel called the “Belmar.” Now there was a well known Belmar on the Olas Altas in Mazatlan then, but this was nothing like that. It was a simple hotel on a corner on the road into town with a basic room and a cold water shower. I recall a very pretty Mexican girl with long black hair lived in the back with her family. When she smiled she was missing teeth. My folks went out everyday for a while looking to rent a house. They found one not too many days later, a newly built one in fact, owned by a Dr. Hernandez. I believe the monthly rent for the two bedroom house was around $242.Pesos about $34 dollars at the time. We moved in and almost immediately met and made friends with the Mexican family next door. The senor ran a bike repair business out of their house. My mother then hunted up a local carpenter/furniture maker and had new living room furniture made, it was so incredibly inexpensive then.
Come September, like back home, it was time to go back to school. It was a tad scary. I only spoke three words of Spanish and most Mexican kids spoke about two words of English. The school building was a series of stalls around a dirt area on three sides, something like animal stalls, open aired, no glass windows, a cement floor and small blackboards hanging from a nail. The roof was palm fronds and the walls were palm bark. I sat towards the back of the class to the far rig side, like I always have. Frequently during class, the other kids would turn around and look at me. They were truly all dark-eyed and black-haired. I was the only blue-eyed, blonde-haired person there! They were mostly very friendly and spoke to me in Spanish, and I struggled with understanding them. My folks had dictionaries and a Berlitz book of Spanish phrases I would refer to a lot in the beginning. The first Spanish phrase I taught myself was “I don’t understand.” “No entiendo” I attended “secundaria” school for two hours in the morning, then three hours in the evening. How different this was! This was for two reasons: The primary grades used the school in between time, and as there were older students — some adults–in the secondary grades, and it kept their days free to go to work, etc.
As it turned out, I was among the last students to use the old school. A new 2 story building was being finished in a different part of town, and soon was ready to occupy. But first they needed volunteers to put together the new desks that had arrived disassembled in boxes. They requested that we bigger kids help putting them together and so I did. Here in the states, children say allegiance to the flag every day. In Mexico, it’s a bit more military-like. Every week, we marched the cobble-stoned streets of town with a drum and bugle corp! There’s a photo or two my mother took of me doing just that. Everyone’s dressed in khakis or white, some girls with white gloves, but not me–nobody told me!
Life in a small, tropical town was fascinating. I can’t claim I missed California for a minute. It was so different, so interesting. No time was wasted doing as the natives did: swam, fished, caught shrimps in a net, dug for clams on a beach, rode horses, and drove a mule drawn wagon. I rode many of those push scooters, shot pool at the local hotel or a mens billiard hall, and played on a basketball team. I played the futbolito machines, and eventually made the first skateboard in town. I played marbles, learned to use a balero and a sling. My folks bought me a new MExican made bicycle also.
I climbed trees and knocked down fruit. Papaya, mango, and guavas. I ate many things I’d never eaten or seen before. There was of course, beef cabeza, from the cheeks, lengua or tongue, and even testicles: just once!
The seafood choices were almost endless. Being the village was on the Pacific coast and there were also estuaries and mangrove swamps nearby, fishing was the main source of employment for most the gentleman there. Coconuts were also a major source of commerce. And San Blas had a well known Jungle Trip. A boat ride through the mangroves for several miles that ended at a fresh water spring.There was a small restaurant and changing rooms so one could swim in the crystal clear water. There were many sorts of exotic birds in the area, and also caimans, a smaller species of crocodile.The Audubon Society made yearly visits for bird watching.
There were frequent festivities and occasional religious celebrations or parades. Every town in Mexico has it’s celebration of life day. Many celebrations are of the Catholic saints variety, some hail back to Spain, some to the indigenous cultures prior to invasion. Sometimes circuses and carnivals with rides either came into town or to other nearby villages.
San Blas has significant history. It was a main port, founded in 1530, for the Spanish who sailed north to California and to the Philippines. There are ruins of an old church, and a fort on a hill overlooking the town, and a crumbling customs house on the estuary.
The Huichol Indians live nearby in the Nayar Mountains (part of the Sierra Madres and they would pass through San Blas on their way to the ocean to pray and perform ceremony. I found many of their gifts to their gods in the ocean amongst the big rocks against the cliff sides or simply lying on the beach, that had washed up after being deposited in the sea. Small arrows, carved boats, yarn paintings, God’s Eyes, and bead and bees wax bowls made from gourds.
I did my first real flirting in San Blas. The Mexican girls were very friendly and flirtatious. They’re not self-conscious, but quite forthright and very sweet. Eventually, nature took its course. She lived just down the street. She had noticed me as I had her, and our maid introduced us; I was 13, Consa was 15.
I fell right in with the rest of her family at her home. I was at her house more than my own. My mother thought I was going to school in the mornings and evenings…but only rarely. Consa didn’t go to school much as she had too much to do at home with the family. They made tortillas and sold them out of their house. I also spent a good deal of time with her younger brother, Quique. We shot slingshots and I learned to use his sling Goliath-like, for the first time. It’s was lethal! We played marbles, and a toy called a balero. Those that have a heavy, cylindrical, wooden thing with a hole at one end that hangs from a string, connected to a stick. You swing the cylinder just so, so that it flips and lands on the stick.
Enrique Sr. was a slaughterer for the meat markets. I went along once to see what he did. Nothing fancy, just a sharp knife in the right spot and it was over for that cow. He cut the jugular and the blood poured out. He cupped his hands together and drank a handful of the blood. Then he reached down inside the cow’s neck and stabbed the heart....
It was never boring. Sometimes lazy, or slow, and hot, but never boring. The Mexico experience affected me deeply. All those in my family that have gone there fell in love with the place. We love the gentle, friendly people and their beautiful language, the music, the food, the tropical climate, the warm ocean water, the colors, the skies, and the generally low cost of living there. I learned to speak good Spanish, and realized that even though I live here in the states, much of my heart is in Mexico. I return when I can.