surfing alone

Breakfast on the beach.


I could do it every morning.  But I don't.


It is a five minute walk to the beach from my house.  Fifteen minutes more to the restaurants.


But I don't do it very often.  When I do, it reminds me why I chose to move to Melaque.  The sun.  The sand.  The cooling morning breeze. The rhythmic surge of the tide -- as if I had been tucked into some somnolent beast's circulatory system.


It is easy to see how the part-timers are seduced into the paradise myth.  I slip into myself now and then.


I stopped at one of the restaurants this morning after tapping the ATM for pesos.  And I had Goldilocks timing.


Starting on Friday (which will be of the Good variety this week), the vacant beach you see above will be chockablock with tourists.


But not your pale snowbird tourists.  These will be Mexican tourists.  For most of them semana santa (Holy Week; Easter Week) begins on Friday and runs through the rest of next week.


When I lived in Greece, no one paid much attention to Christmas.  But, Easter?  That was a different story.  It was the big religious holiday of the year. 


The same is true of Easter in Mexico.  It is the big event.  As long as you ignore the Buffet of Our Lady of the Painted Cape.


And when you think about it, it makes a lot of sense.  I understand why Christmas makes the northern European theological hit list.  The incarnation is an important point.  Lacking any deity qualifications, it just isn't going to happen to me, though.


But, resurrection?  Now, that is something I can celebrate -- and want a piece of.


Of course, that assumes the Mexican families on their way here have weighty religious thoughts on their mind.


They don't.  They will spend Sunday at mass and the rest of the week on the beach indulging in the sins of the sun.


Me?  I am going to enjoy my breakfast today -- and the surf's pounding solitude.

dancing in my chair

I am in a Latin frame of mind today.


Before I get a big "Duh! You live in Mexico, dude!" from everybody, let me explain.


Our summer has begun.  Not by the calendar.  We will not be there until late June -- just as the rest of the northern hemisphere.


But the reality of summer arrives around here when the keepers of humidity say it is time to rehydrate the Pacific coast of Mexico.  That happened last week.  And it was as predictable as the naked, overweight guy pouring another can of water on the sauna's rocks.


The gills I developed for Oregon rains are coming in handy.  This is salamander weather.  When the shore and ocean gain enough kinship they couldn't even get married in Arkansas.


But it is not just the humidity that puts me in a Latin mood.  After all, this humidity could spell New Orleans just as easily.  And for all of its French and Spanish roots, New Orleans is no more Latin than is Chicago.


For the past hour, three of my neighbors have been in a battle of the boom boxes.  Almost all of it ranchera -- traditional and contemporary.  All at full volume.


My young neighbors to the east of me appear to have won.  In celebration, out comes the mambo -- the dance, not the snake.  And I become one with the music in my chair under the shady mango.


During the music war, I almost pulled out my headphones.  Listening to three music sources in different tempos and on different beats is only slightly less pleasant than listening to Manhattan street noises.


But, like everything else in Mexico, if you are patient, matters sort themselves out.  Usually.


Or they start all over again.  The battle has been rejoined by another boom box across the laguna.


But that is why the siesta was invented.

driving past

"Wow!  I feel like I'm in Vietnam."


We were driving toward Manzanillo when my Air Force buddy Rob tossed that one out of the blue.


The problem is, I knew exactly what he meant.  I occasionally feel that way myself.  I have another friend who said something similar on a visit.  But he thought he was in The Philippines.


There is something about the tropical Pacific coast of Mexico that starts the search function in the nostalgia file.  It happens to me at least twice a week.


And I came across part of the answer on Saturday.  My blogger friend, John Calypso, recently bought a house in Puerto Escondido.  One of the joys of home ownership is house repairs.  In this case, the roof.  A palapa roof.


You see them everywhere on both coasts of Mexico.  But John gave us a nice history lesson about roof thatching. 


It turns out that the familiar Mexican palapa is not Mexican, at all.  It is one of the imports the Spanish brought from The Philippines.  Another, of course, being the coconut that is not native to Mexico, either.


That helps explain why the thatched roof below looks as if it might be somewhere on Luzon.  When it is really just two lots down from my house.

But there is something more.  Even when there are no palapas to give visual clues, I still get that feeling.


Enlarge the photograph at the top of this post by clicking on it.  That view is on the road to Manzanillo.  In fact, the very spot where Rob had his Vietnam flashback -- and where I have the same thought every time I drive over that hill.


Or this photograph.  Doesn't it speak southeast Asia to you?

The bare rock hills.  The water reflecting the tropical landscape.  The jungle vegetation.


Maybe it is as simple as realizing that coastal areas in the tropics are cousins.  And that is the reason the Spanish imported the palapa to Mexico. 


It is the perfect roof to allow air circulation in humid areas and to keep out torrential rains.  Something that Malaysia, The Philippines, Vietnam and tropical Mexico share.


The part about Rob being positive he saw North Vietnamese regulars sneaking through the rice paddy will have to wait for another session.

grilling the meat

Whenever I start thinking about whether or not I should keep blogging, I run across something like this on the street. 


And I wonder, would I even notice this if I did not have a journal that covets the eccentric confined within the ordinary?


Mexico is filled with all sorts of kitsch like this.  Just think of the objects held sacred that end up on tea towels -- let alone some religious visitation on a tortilla.


But, why not barbecue pig parts over a pig grill.  After all, Los Angeles made a name for itself with novelty architecture.


If you look in the window, you can see the first candidate for roasting standing in the waiting line ready to jump on the grill -- just like a shmoo.


I really need to ask how much it costs.  And then this little piggy can come home from the market.

at a snail's pace

Good deeds in nature are like anything else in life.


You often do not get to share in the rewards of your work.


Not so with our little swamp.  When we harvested the water lettuce and water hyacinth last year, we saw two immediate results.  And they both arrived on large wings.


The morning after we opened a small patch of the water, I discovered a wading bird I had never seen before.  Mottled brown and white.  And a bit shy.  He was aloft before I could get a good look at him.


At first, I thought he was a variety of ibis because of the down turned beak.  It turns out I was wrong.


He was a limpkin.  And he kept coming back.  Each time a little more confident.


It is amazing that I saw him at all.  According to my bird books and local birders, we are on the border of the limpkin's range.  They are not a common sighting.


More than one lives in the laguna.  You can hear them at night.  Their call is almost like a scream.  Chupacabra stalks in the dark.

But the limpkin was not our only new visitor. 


About a week later, I saw a large black bird with a white tail patch circling the pond.  Mexico has all sorts of eagles and hawks.  But I had never seen one like this.


When I finally got a good photograph of his bill, I decided I knew what he was.  Neither hawk nor eagle.  He was a snail kite.  The hooked beak betrayed his ancestry -- and diet.


But I have a few doubts about his identity. 


With the exception of the bill, he looks a lot like a common black hawk or a solitary eagle.  His build does not look like that of a kite.  And his legs certainly are not the orange tootsies found in bird identification books.

 

But it is not only his field marks that make me wonder if I have the correct name for him. 


If he is a snail kite, he is out of his range.  The limpkin may have been on the border, but as you can see on this range map, Melaque is not even close to the green area -- the snail kite homeland.


For now, he will be a snail kite.  And if he is, there may be a reason for these two birds to be out of their normal range.  They both feed on apple snails.  And the laguna offers a healthy buffet of snails for both species.


I have never seen one of the apple snails alive.  They have a snorkel that allows them to live underwater most of their life.

 

But whenever I clean out the vegetation, I find plenty of empty snail shells.


It is easy to see why both birds look for these snails.  They are big.  Almost as large as a man's fist.  I suspect, based on the pierce hole, this snail met its demise on the beak of a kite.


When I picked up the shell, it reminded me of something.  Those escargot kits that you can buy in "gourmet" shops with the empty shells and canned snails.  Having tried them, I suspect the kite is getting a better gastronomic deal.


There is a bit more vegetation to fish out of the inlet.  But, for now, I am going to enjoy the avian rewards that have come our way with a lot of hard work.

three part hominy

Food is romance.


We fall in and out of love with its various forms over time.


My youthful infatuation with Twinkies and Hostess fruit pies led to irreconcilable differences, divorce, and a very bad taste in my mouth.


I had a brief fling with Brussels sprouts -- those odd little cabbages -- in England.  Just a year.  There is no need to speak of it again.


And then there was hominy.


My family is as Yankee as they come.  Mayflower.  Massachusetts.  Funny hats and even stranger shoes with buckles in all the wrong places.  We learned to eat our corn fresh.  Not after it had been lye-drated.


I had never even seen hominy until a visit to my cousins.  There it was in a bowl on the supper table.  White.  Fat.  Canned.  It looked like mushy corn nuts.  But tasted like aged library paste -- to my elementary school palate.


And that was that.  One date.  The relationship was over.


Those relativists who insist on telling us we cannot say we don't like something until we have tried it -- I tried it.  Didn't like it.


I have been offered hominy only twice since then.  Both times I demurred.


Mexico is the land of corn.  You can (and do) find it in almost every type of food -- including soup.


And prominent in the soup category is pozole.  A soup made primarily of hominy and some form of meat.


Pozole is as Mexican as a food can be.  Before the conquest, the Aztecs created pozole as a sacred dish.  For them, the connection was obvious.  The gods created humans out of corn dough.


But here is the twist.  During their ceremonies to appease the gods, the Aztecs would sacrifice their victims and add the human meat to their ritual corn stew.  The community would then consume the bodies of the victims offered to their gods.  A rather primitive form of communion.


When the Spanish arrived, they frowned on cannibalism.  After all, they had better work for captives than to sacrifice them to Aztec gods.  There were mines to dig and fields to plant.  With slave labor.


Instead of human flesh, pork became the usual meat in pozole.  Another example of the term "long pork" having creepy historical echoes.


I have been tempted to try pozole -- despite the hominy -- for two years.  This week, I finally gave in to curiosity.  After all, I enjoy culinary adventures.  I am always willing to put treats in my mouth -- and it is even better when things are as good or better than I expected.*


Melaque is fortunate to have one of the best pozole restaurants on the west coast.  At least, it once was.  All I know is that it was very good.


I ordered mine with chicken.  But, who knows?  I hear that is exactly how tourist tastes.

* -- The reference to culinary adventures reminded me that I have not told you my eating tales in Mexico City.  I will do that.  Soon.

are your papers in order?

I seem to have misplaced my common sense.


I had a series of small chores to accomplish today.  And they all went well.  By noon, I was done with my list.


But I knew I had two more things to do.  Two things I have been putting off for almost a month.


The first left me no choice.  My FM3 expires in the middle of this month. 


Last year, I applauded Mexico for jumping into the twenty-first century with internet forms for visa renewals.  And I still feel that way.


For some reason, I was simply not in a mood this month for government forms -- the reason will soon be apparent.  With the expiration date coming up almost as fast as my departure date for Rome, I needed to get moving.


I had agreed to accompany my land lady to Manzanillo in the morning to take care of a few chores -- like changing the telephone bill to my name.  And getting a faster internet package (I hope).  I am a bit tired of having each of my photographs take at least fifteen minutes to load.


And it seemed to be a good time to renew my FM3.


With that deadline in mind, I grabbed my Spanish dictionary, dug out my passport, and opened up the required internet site.  It took me less than 20 minutes to get the ball rolling.


In theory, when I show up in Manzanillo tomorrow, the process will have begun.  I will take along my passport (and a copy), my old FM3 booklet, a utility bill and my constancia de domicilio to prove my address, a copy of my lease, and the original and copies of my last three bank statements to prove I have adequate income for an FM3.  And, the item I did not have last year, a copy of my land lady's voter card.


Oh, and one additional item: mug shots.  Because I will get one of the new identity cards, I need front and right portrait photographs to accompany the application.  The photograph that will undoubtedly be used on CNN when I am kidnapped by leftist separtists.


Several people have told me proof of income is no longer required for renewals.  But I am taking mine along.  There are rules -- and then there are practices.


After pulling all of that together, I am looking forward to tomorrow's process.  I hope.


My second task is what has put me off of government forms -- perhaps for the year.


It is tax time.  And no one likes filling out income tax forms.  Even with software packages that streamline the process.


This was an odd income year for me.  I started the year retired.  Then I returned to my old job for six months to train my successor.


I had been an employee for the prior twenty years.  And for each of those years, I received an income tax refund from both the federal and state governments.


But not for 2009 -- my first year of retirement.  I ended up paying a rather hefty pile of Franklins to both governments.


To avoid that result for the 2010 tax year, I upped my withholding amounts from my retirement checks and asked my former employer to take out the maximum in taxes for the six months I was there.


Due to my great planning, I whipped right through the tax preparation software.  Only to discover that I owed almost three times as much in non-withheld taxes than last year.  I ran and re-ran the figures.  They were correct.


That was in early March.  I kept waiting to file my taxes.  I suppose because I was reluctant to part with savings that were the equivalent of buying a late model used car.  As opposed to buying a share in two badly-used governments.


But, today I decided to bite the bullet and slash a financial artery.  And it is done.


It is on days like this that we realize the road from serfdom is a two way street.


But that task is done until next year.


Now I just need to get my visa in order.  Getting deported is not my idea of a great Mexican adventure.


But, who am I to judge?


Note -- I am aware the photograph runs afoul of Godwin's law.  But some things are not to be helped.