After our decidedly low-key Xmas - exactly what we wanted, and one of our best ever (tho' we missed family) - we chose at the last moment to take a 5 day trip to the nearest beach at Troncones on the Pacific coast - a five and a half hour drive southwest of San Miguel de Allende. The drive was surprising and gorgeous: as we left the high-desert plateau of the Bajio where we live, we gradually descended through more green and fertile territory, then through a mountain range complete with fir trees and pitched roof houses that looked just like parts of Colorado (side note: nearly all the houses in our part of Mexico are flat roofs of poured concrete - very little rain and no snow means no need for the added complexity of building pitched roofs...). Then we descended further into a bizarrely uninhabited region (the northern part of the state of Guerrero) with a massive river gorge (reminiscent of the Rio Grande in Texas), and then we suddenly found ourselves in a sparsely populated, lush coastal strip that could only be, well, ... vacation!
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| late afternoon walk on the beach... |
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| Local lobster fisherman working the same way they've done it for hundreds of years. |
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| More local wild life you may encounter on the way in to town... |
Despite being only 1/2 north of Ixtapa, a Mexican resort town built ground up from nothing in the 70's into a Florida like soul-less strip of cheap souvenirs and crappy American food, we were in a remote paradise. Most notably for me was the
natural beauty - by natural, I mean remote, unspoiled, and clean. Of all the beaches I've had the fortune to visit (Atlantic, Pacific, Mediterranean) this was the cleanest and most life-abundant by far. After five days, we tallied more than 30 different life forms (non-plant) that we directly encountered. That doesn't include different types, either (e.g. dozens of birds, 1/2 dozen types of crabs, etc.). No joke - we saw armadillos, octopus, starfish, moray eels, giant iguanas, sea turtles, bats, tarantulas, & whales, not to mention the obvious pelicans and dolphins and goats and lobsters and wild horses and.... you get the drift. One night after dark we sat on the beach completely awed as the waves would crash in fluorescent blue - the waters were full of oxygen sensitive algae that lit up like a black light with each crash. It was one of the most surreal things I've ever seen.
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| The smallest hermit crab I've ever seen - in Will's hand... |
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| Look closely & you'll see octopus, hermit crabs, crabs, sea slugs and sea smails, and maybe a baby eel... |
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| A baby moray eel... |
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| And a much bigger one hiding under some coral. |
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| infant, completely colorless & transparent spiny lobster |
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| Will shows off more micro-wild life... |
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| Gorgeous coast line... |
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Sea urchins everywhere...
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| Alya's annual shot with a captured lizard. |
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| Some other local fishermen... |
The next day we headed a mile down the beach to a local bar/restaurant where the kids got to visit a sea turtle nursery and they were able to release a few new-borns into the waves - quite an experience and more philosophical than they probably grasped...
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| Sea turtle eggs waiting to hatch... |
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| tonight's lucky little hopefuls... |
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| These amazing little creatures can, if lucky. grow to 100 lbs+ and live over 100 years... |
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| Alya shows off her pick |
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| A joint prayer for the sending off... |
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| ... and the little creatures are set free... |
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| ... while everyone anxiously watches... |
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| ... hoping for the best. |
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| Off they go! |
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| Time to say goodbye... |
The place was teeming with life and made us all feel like Darwin must have felt off the NW coast of Australia that struck him so profoundly as to alter the course of his life's work... But unlike him, we didn't completely alter our life mission (not that we have one), thanks to the nightly dinner bell which brought us back to more temporal pleasures...
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| Bowls of fresh local lobster served up by the housekeeper for dinner - for $5 a head. Hard to beat. |
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Paco & Abril and their girls caught these fish one morning and shared them with
us for lunch. Benito cleaned them on they were on the grill a few hours later... |
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| ...as a delicious lunch... |
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| ... which little Ines shows off (she caught the biggest fish). |
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| Paco buying some fresh fruit from a local vendor... |
And for pure pleasure pursuits, despite the obvious (yet treasured) lounging and reading. The setting was ideal: three casitas (little houses) of which we had one, very simple: no AC, no windows, but clean and comfy and equipped with mosquito netting encasing each bed, but thank god, no mosquitos! It was a "green" place, so even the showers used only solar power - and that was fine with us!
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| The view from the dinner table just after sunset. Paradise. |
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| The house at night. |
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| Janan & Alya displaying the art of relaxation on our porch bench/swing... |
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| ... and plenty of pool time! |
We also had a ball body surfing on boogie boards in some amazing waves. This area is famous for surfing (yet still largely undiscovered), and we happened to arrive when a rather giant round of waves came through for 4 days. In fact, the waves were so big and so head-on that the surfers all had to go further north. But we obviously had a good time:
As if all this wasn't enough, we had the great fortune of sharing our time there with a couple and their two children from Guanajuato - a historic, sophisticated, university town about an hour west of San Miguel. Paco & Abril (the parents) indulged us in our desire to attempt to speak more Spanish (poco a poco aprendemos español!) while their daughters Manuella & Ines had a good time playing with Alya on the beach and in the pool. We all had a great time together, including their one year old male dog "Pipo" and the dog we were sitting for (Indie), who, by the way, happened to be just finishing her heat. And yes, despite our best efforts of prevention, we think Indie will soon be a proud mother. So we will likely have a new puppy in about 3 to 4 months. Thankfully, our friends from San Francisco who trusted us to watch over their precious pooch have gotten over the initial shock & horror of our lapse of vigilance and have accepted that she will bear the fruits of a pure bred chocolate lab (Indie) and a Guanajuato Mexico street dog rescued at a gas station (fortunately, Pipo has the same hair and eye color as Indie, but notably longer hair in a collie or shepard type vein). Paco (a Ph.D. bio-chemist) helped calm us down a bit and is quite pleased about the situation and feels, as he said "proud that Pipo has done the family good by nabbing a high class pure-bred from the posh town of San Miguel." There's much truth in the statement... And despite all the potential custody & child support issues, we continue to keep in touch with Paco & Abril. It's nice to not only have another set of new friends here but to have made some firm family bonds.
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| Indie & Pipo (the lady & the tramp) - a true beach romance |
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| Alya & Manuella exploring the tidal "quicksand" |
We also had the great luck of having, with no fore knowledge, a friend from San Miguel, Mary Walker, and her two kids Seamus and Grace show up. So the kids were in heaven and had plenty of play mates (meaning we got to chill and read - yeah!).
As if all these sights, flavors, & happenings weren't enough, we had the good fortune of being in Troncones on January 6th, which the Mexicans celebrate as the "Dia de Reyes" or day of the kings, and we just happen to celebrate it as ALYA'S BIRTHDAY!
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| Untraditional birthday cake, but she didn't complain... |
Besides Allie's B-day, this day is also referred to as the Epiphany (as some of the old-school Catholics probably recall), which signifies the day that the three kings brought gifts to the baby Jesus (I so want to jump into a foray of near-Eastern mythology v. biblical literalism here, but I know better...). In Mexico, this is the traditional day of gift giving during the holiday season, especially for the kids (Santa Claus or Klaus, as you probably recall, is a Germanic myth and decidedly not Latin American - they have no Santa at all except as imported by North Americans, which sadly, like McDonald's and Nike, makes as stronger presence here year by year). For Mexicans, gifts are brought to the children in the middle of the night on Jan. 6th by the three kings. And another tradition we were able to participate in was the sharing of the Rosca de Reyes or "King's Ring" - a cake/pastry which, not only tasty, has three (or in this case, four) little plastic figurines of the baby Jesus hidden and baked inside. The idea is that you share this cake with friends and family, and after cutting it up and dividing it, the person(s) who get the baby Jesus in their share have to host a party for all the others on the feast of the Candelaria on February 2nd (again, the Catholics may recognize this as Candlemas, the midway point between the winter soltice (or some would say Xmas) and the spring equinox - yet another very ancient pagan holiday adopted by Christians, but I need to stay focused here). So in Mexico, he or she who gets the baby Jesus in the Rosca de Reyes must host the others on Feb. 2nd and serve tamales. I can't wait to taste Abril's tamales in Guanajuato:
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| Cutting the Rosca de Reyes... |
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| And the three pretty Barona girls each got a baby Jesus! Guess who's hosting us for La Candelaria? |
All in all, I must say, this was the best beach vacation I've had since I was a young kid. And the 5.5 hour drive with Janan, Will, Alya, and our friends' dog Indie was a breeze compared to the 22 hour marathon drives we did in the 70's from Indiana to Florida. And needless to say, even a dusty little back-water town like Troncones has so much culture and charm. I can't wait to go back there...
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| Allie thinks so, too... |
And lastly, for the grandparents - here are a few more family shots:
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