vaznetti | Where am I?

I'm writing this listening to the sound of the waves and the pelicans as they flap away down the beach; they'll be back in a little while, no doubt. Today is overcast: there seems to be a big storm heading in from the Pacific.

The place we're in is about three hours south of Puerto Vallarta and an hour and a half or so north of Manzanillo. We're right on a crescent-shaped bay ringed by mountains, a long expanse of sand with the town tucked into the south end where a couple of rivers come down from the hills to make a lagoon and a mountain cuts off the beach and makes a place boats can be drawn up safely--harbor would be too strong a word. At the far (north) end the curve of the bay is broken by bluffs and a mangrove swamp, and there's a moderately fancy hotel and a little cove where sailboats like to anchor. Just past that at the tip of the bay is a long, wide beach with a few fish-restaurants and hotels--it's about ninety minutes in a ponga (a little motorboat) from town, I think.

Village, really--it's too small to be a town. It's set at the base of two hills and there are two dirt roads parallel to the beach and a little grid of streets to the north of the hills and another between the two, along an arroyo. People have taken to building houses up the hills in the jungle, as well--some of these are monstrously large and funny looking, as well. There's a square and a church (all very modern, because everything else was washed away in a hurricane in 1995) and a fishing cooperative, a town hall and a primary school, three or four stores and a handful of restaurants.

Our house is a large white building at the very south edge of town, just under the hill that marks the south edge of the bay and right on the beach; it has a gate and a drive lined with coconut-palms--very convenient for stringing hammocks so long as you don't mind the risk of falling coconuts--which is about 30 meters long and ends in a circle with a huge flower-bed. On the left hand, inland side of the circle there's a long pink building with a thatched roof: the casita (guest house), where the B.H. and I are staying. To the right a set of stairs lead up to the main house (white with a tile roof, and all on one level). The stairs lead up to the sala, a big square veranda which is completely open--we have to move all the cushions to the dining table in the center when it rains, because wind blows the rain right inside. The house itself gets progressively more enclosed: it's made of two nested rectangles. The inner has two bedrooms and two bathrooms, and it's tucked into the corner of the outer rectangle, which has a kitchen at the top end (the best kitchen for cooking in I've ever seen in a house we've stayed in in Mexico), and then becomes a long thin space alongside the bedrooms with a dining area, then a little sitting area (a couch and two chairs) then another sitting area, with a desk, where I'm writing this. This space opens up onto the sala with folding doors, and in the daytime they're practically one room. The whole house is very open, but at the same time feels very private, maybe because it's so large.

The garden (in front of the house and along the beach--this is what the drive runs through) is the preserve of two mottled brown and blue tiger herons, which make a huge honking noise if they get disturbed enough to take to the air: they're only about a foot high, so the noise seems completely disproportionate. There used to be frogs, but a caiman ate them all and then fell into the well and started to eat the sump-pump; it had to be lured out and carried through the village to the lagoon at the far end, which is some kind of alligator preserve. In the summer the lagoon overflows and the alligators make it into the bay to fish, but don't stay long: they don't like saltwater.

The bay is full of fish, and on the beach outside there are usually a dozen or more egrets, playing chicken with the waves and looking for something to eat. There are also sandpipers, and swarms of little boobies out in the bay, and frigate birds and terns overhead. Not too many gulls, because the pelicans drive them off, apparently. The kids have taken to tossing bait up into the air for the frigate birds to catch, so they come much closer to land than they used to, and at these times the beach looks like something out of a Hitchcock movie, because of course the kids can't throw the bait very high up. The pelicans try for the bait as well, but seem a bit too lazy to really get involved. They float out on the bay, ducking their heads every now and then to catch something to eat, or skim right above the surface, and then dive down. Life here isn't that much more active for us: walks on the beach, a little swimming, some quality hammock-time, and then in the evening cocktails in the sala. It's actually quite a social town: our second night we were invited out to dinner and if you eat in a restaurant you usually end up sharing your table with another party. The B.H. and I prefer the taqueria, which is cheap and just off the square (another opened directly on the square, which we might try) and has the best food in town if you like tacos de carne asada, but my parents like Martin's, which is a gringo restaurant that Mexicans will go to--Martin has more than three dishes on the menu, which sets him above the taqueria, I suppose, and the food is good, too. He has musicians sometimes, as well, so that people can dance a little between the tables.

That's about it. I'll post this, since we unhook the computer if it storms: friends down the beach forgot to unhook the phone line as well, the other night, and fried their modem.