El Arco Norte

Rejoice! There is now a Mexico City bypass. Until five months ago, we on the Pacific side of Mexico had to drive through the western hemisphere’s largest metropolitan area to get pretty much anywhere east or south of it. And it wasn’t easy.

We recently headed for Xalapa in the state of Veracruz. We checked online for the day the last digit of our license plate would forbid us to pass through Mexico City, slept in Toluca and mounted the assault the next morning. It was a good passage with only one stop to ask directions and was accomplished in about an hour. In fact, it was spectacularly good because, when we got gas on the far side at about 10:30, we learned about an additional rule: No out-of-state cars on the road until 11. The last time we made a mistake, it took 2000 pesos to get out of it.

While in Xalapa word came to us of the bypass, El Arco Norte, and we took it going home. Here’s how:

East-West. Past Puebla you exit the main highway at Texmelucan where it’s almost well marked. A warning sign says El Arco Norte; the actual turnoff says Hwy 57 to Querétaro. At an un-manned toll plaza you eventually figure out to push a button and take a plastic card. The route, through beautiful, sparsely populated countryside north of Mexico City, proceeds past a turnoff to Pachuca, past a turnoff to Querétaro, and on to the exit at Atlacomulco where you pay 340 pesos. Atlacomulco is located at the point where the highway from Guadalajara turns south toward Toluca.

West-East. The exit is not marked “El Arco Norte” but there’s an Atlacomulco exit sign and another that indicates it’s the road to Querétaro.

The route takes about an hour more than going through Toluca and Mexico City but I estimate that the relaxation will add about four days to your life expectancy.

Another San Pancho Writer Breaks Out

One of our number, Ellen Greene, published a wonderful book called Remember the Sweet Things (William Morrow/HarperCollins) in 2009, and now I’ve followed her with The Lives of La Escondida (Lirio, 2011.) When we started our writers’ group several years ago, publishing was only a gleam in our eyes, though we were all serious about our “craft” and a couple of us had books in the works. I think both Ellen and I would say that our writing group was catalytic in our writing process.

Things are strange in the book world these days. Barry Eisler (writer of bestseller thrillers) turned down a $500,000 advance in favor of self-publishing on Amazon’s CreateSpace after a hard look at the bottom line. Considering that an advance is, by definition, to be paid back from royalties; that book royalties from publishing houses run in the 10-15% range, while you’ll get more like 40% if you self-publish—with the disparity even greater for the e-version—the math was clearly in favor of the Indie approach.

Of course, Eisler was already well known and has no need for the book tours and all the other publicity efforts of the established publishing houses. Oops, make that the book tours, etc. that used to be part of the package at the established houses. Now, times are tough, and HarperCollins belongs to Rupert Murdoch.

And those traditional houses accept manuscripts only through literary agents, and agents take a hefty percentage, too, if you can land one, which I hadn’t when I stopped trying. I stumbled upon a publisher that would accept author submissions. I submitted; I was accepted! But if something seems too good to be true… After nearly two years of dealing with rank amateurs—extending to their knowledge, or lack thereof, of grammar and punctuation, and a refusal to allow the book to appear in e-form—I extricated myself from my contract.

What’s more, the publisher was going to print my book using CreateSpace, and then give me 10%. Sure, he provided me an editor—whose work I couldn’t use—and a proof-reader—who wouldn’t consider even the Chicago Manual of Style (“We aren’t in Chicago.”) Those, if competent, are worth a lot. However, the publisher wasn’t paying these people—thus justifying his percentage. They were working for royalties, too, and their work was slow since these weren’t their day jobs, which they should never consider quitting.

So, like Barry Eisler, I published on CreateSpace, and I make about two dollars more per book than Kathryn Stockett gets for The Help. (It won’t be necessary for you to point out who is likely making more money.) For fees, CreateSpace will edit, proof, or design, but you may do it all yourself virtually free of charge. And, if there are tricky bits, there is also prompt and competent tech support. For ten dollars, one can have an ISBN attached to a publishing house of one’s own—mine is named Lirio, from Casa de los Lirios, my San Pancho home.

My book is a romance that violates some of the conventions, hopefully making my characters more lifelike, while still devastatingly appealing. I based it in New Mexico where I lived for thirty-seven years, and in Mexico, too. There, in the 1590s, the Inquisition drove suspected Jews north to New Mexico where they went underground and hang on until this day. The book is available on Amazon and in all e-reader forms, as described on my webpage: www.carolynkingson.com.

Tlacuaches Trumped

Opossoms, (tlacuaches, in Spanish), find my San Pancho home agreeable, as I’ve complained in several posts. Yes, they can have some bad habits, such as chewing through the gas line to my stove and causing an explosion, but I’ve now achieved perspective. My daughter found baby-blues to be too much, my grandbaby beckoned, and I’ve moved to London for a time to be what help I can. And it is London that has opened my eyes.

And how has London, more precisely, Chiswick, done this? Chiswick with its meandering streets, some of which probably follow old cow paths; where dropped items hang on fences until reclaimed; dense with prams and nannies and lovingly tended gardens; home of Colin Firth, for crissakes—is infested with foxes. Walk home after dark, gaze out into the garden early in the morning, and you’re sure to see them starting out on the night’s business or heading back to the den, which is probably hidden under a garden buddleia, maybe yours. But don’t think they aren’t out in the day, too. These foxes look as though they have no need of “sly” or “wily;” those traits were apparently given up as unnecessary long ago. A better epithet would be “arrogant as a fox.” They don’t slink or skulk home in the grey-green morning light. These animals are alpha, top, apex predators. And I’m not overlooking humans.

I say without fear of contradiction that everyone in the UK knows that a fox entered an east London house, went upstairs, and mauled twin baby girls in their crib—one on the face. When the screams brought the parents running, they found the fox sitting as calmly as if it were the family dog. It was headline line news when the babies finally got out of the hospital. Tlacuaches would never do anything like that.

Another baby was attacked while sleeping beside its mother on the sofa. The woman whose house I’m staying in found one in her living room with her three-year-old. They regularly tear up my daughter’s garden. Everybody has a story. It’s been hot, but do you think you dare leave open a ground-floor window?

Foxes have a devoted following in England. Fox hunts—“…the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.” (Oscar Wilde)—were a target for animal rights advocates for decades and are now banned. One may be arrested for killing or trapping a fox—though, I presume you’d get off lightly if it could, definitively, be shown to have injured your baby. It’s hard to understand why some humane fox removal is not being attempted until you realize that there’s no place in England that isn’t already full of foxes. Given that, one wonders why the men aren’t out with torches and pitchforks at night.

And if it’s not enough that foxes threaten babies, they kill house cats. (In fairness, I note that The National Fox Welfare Society disputes this and says they only chase them away from their kits, or tease them. Italics, and scepticism, mine.) You’d think even a rumour of cat-killing would put the nail in the fox coffin, cats being nearly as essential to human happiness as babies. And while London wrestles with its dilemma, we hold our grandchildren close and think of the mild-mannered tlacuaches of San Pancho.

On the Road Again

ruins recently excavated near San Miguel de Allende

I often lament to friends and family my not traveling as much as I say I would like. Well, I haven’t booked a flight to Buenos Aires yet, but I did take some baby steps in the past few weeks by driving around Central and Western Mexico with a friend. We stopped in Lagos de Moreno, Guanajuato, San Miguel de Allende, Patzcuaro, and Morelia on the first leg, then Mascota, Talpa, and Tapalpa on the second.

“Isn’t that dangerous?” more than one person asked when they heard of my plan. Holdups and random acts of violence permeate the news from Mexico.

My experience, however, was as pleasant as it has always been here: friendly locals who smiled at us as we walked around their town snapping photos; well-mannered kids stepping off narrow sidewalks to give space to us elders; new arrivals at restaurants saying “Buen provecho” as they passed our table.

But the bad press must have left its mark somewhere in my subconscious because I felt apprehensive when I pulled off a back road in Michoacan to look at my map and a big-wheeled pickup with two men in it stopped behind me. One of them got out and approached my open window.

"Are you all right?” he asked in accent-free English. “Can I help you?” He then gave me what turned out to be perfect directions to the little town I was looking for, returned to his truck, and, along with his passenger, gave me a cheery wave as they went on their way.

Capula, the pueblo I was looking for, remains one of my favorites. Famous for its “brownware,” i.e. brown clay tableware, hand painted and glazed, Capula’s finest artisans are pointillists whose intricate fish and birds vibrate with color. Fabulous prices (around $20 USD for a plate beautiful enough to hang on a wall + matching salsa bowl) meant I could load up on gifts for friends as well as refresh my own stock at home in San Pancho.

It was fun to walk around Tzintzuntzan again, too. Pronounced “tseen-TSOON-tsan” it means Place of the Hummingbirds and is a pre-Hispanic town that specializes in straw goods. My husband Marsh bought a straw hat there years ago and always wore it to the Vallarta airport when picking up houseguests.

“I was angling for a comment on my hat,” he used to confess when someone commented on it, ”just so I could tell you where it comes from and say “tseen-TSOON-tsan.”

I always succumb to the charms of colonial beauties Guanajuato and San Miguel de Allende, captured in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6c0MIWRTHCE I thought, and still think, that I would have chosen Guanajuato as my new hometown if the pull of the ocean weren’t so strong. The University of Guanajuato is a big plus for me. Known for its arts programs, it attracts over 15,000 students and gives the city a youthful vitality and a rich cultural life that includes the fabled international Cervantino festival every October. I went one year and loved it.

Note to self: talk up the Cervantino festival among friends and go again this year. Return to Oaxaca for Day of the Dead, too. And to Mexico City to experience the renowned anthropology museum. And to Tulum to swim in the surreally turquoise water.

Get out there, as the old cruise line ad used to say.

Valentine's Day in El Tuito

The B & B where we stayed on February 14 was perfect for a Valentine’s Day getaway. Located south of Puerto Vallarta in the quiet old town of El Tuito, El Jardin (The Garden) is run by a French couple whose taste runs to the romantic. “A Touch of Paris in Mexico” is the hotel’s motto. Draperies of raspberry-colored silk, diaphanous panels used as room dividers, fluffy pink towels, and candles, candles, candles made for a sensuous setting. Feather boas and bouquets of roses added to the lavish effect.

After settling in, we browsed around El Tuito and went for dinner at Valle Azul, a restaurant with a few sidewalk tables near the main plaza. As we waited for our coconut shrimp, we watched a vendor selling Valentine balloons and stuffed animals wrapped in pink and red. We were musing about what a special Valentine’s Day it had been, when a pickup truck loaded with a slaughtered cow pulled up and parked in front of our table. A skinless head, eyes intact and horns attached, and clear plastic bags of cow innards balanced on piles of bloody meat.

A large fellow wearing a black plastic apron hopped out of the truck, pulled up the metal door of the butcher shop next to our restaurant and backed up the truck smack against our table. I know what’s going to happen next, I thought, and I’m not going to let it bother me. Our coconut shrimp arrived.

The burly butcher slung a side of beef over his shoulder and carried it into his shop. He looked like a strong guy, but it wasn’t easy. Not going to bother me, not going to bother me, I repeated to myself. I thought of my vegetarian daughter, and though I miss her, I was glad she was not there at that moment. The butcher finished unloading the carcass just as we polished off the coconut shrimp.

We settled up with Valle Azul and I asked the butcher what he did with the horns. Unless they are especially big ones, he said, he throws them out. Seems a shame, I thought, but if there is something useful you could do with cow horns, a butcher would have thought of it by now.

In hopes of getting a photo memento of our special Valentine’s Day dinner, we stopped the next morning at the butcher shop. The sides of beef hung from hooks behind the counter, where the butcher stood, slicing fat from chunks of steak. “That was one big cow,” I observed as a conversation starter. “Very heavy, about 500 kilos--more than a thousand pounds,” he said. The butcher, whose name is Joaquin Gómez, seemed pleased when I asked if I could take a photo, and he wondered if it would be on the Internet. “I don’t have email myself,” he said, “but my sister in California does, and she can send me a copy.”

So here’s to you, El Jardin del Tuito and Joaquin Gómez. And thank you for making Valentine’s Day 2011 a memorable one.

The Big Chill

I was raised in the Midwest and I know cold weather. Phrases like “wind-chill, sub-zero, single digits, and deep freeze,” don’t scare hardy folks from Chicago like me. Parkas, ear-muffs, leggings, long underwear, boots, scarves, gloves and wooly socks: clothing labels that say duo-fold, fleece-lined and down-filled are winter wardrobe basics. But when the morning temperature here in San Pancho is 50 degrees, it is bone-chilling; a cold that is impossible to escape in an unheated concrete block house with clay tile floors.

There is some comfort in knowing that I am not the only person piling on the layers. Hooded sweatshirts have appeared in the pueblo. Workers huddle in the rear of pickups wearing jackets that look alarmingly like parkas. Bundled against the cold, the children are hurried along, their small feet scuffling in oversized boots. Boots?

Still, I am reluctant to mention the weather to friends and family back in the States. I am not likely to get much sympathy when they haven’t had a ray of sunshine in six weeks and the high temperature for the day is 10 degrees. And it’s true, despite the record chill, afternoons here are in the 70s and balmy; we can go to the beach.

When friends were planning a visit recently I pondered how to suggest they bring one or two warmer items to wear.

“It is a little cool in the morning,” I wrote, “and again in the evening.”

Just as I expected they reminded me of their winter endurance skills. Fine I thought, we’ll see, and put the small electric heater in their room, just in case.

It wasn’t until they had been here a few days that they conceded it was a little “cooler” than they had remembered from last year.

“Dinner on the patio?” I asked, as I carried our plates toward the door.

“Maybe eating inside would be cozier,” our guests said.

In front of the oven?

Back in Business

As I walked down San Pancho’s main street in mid-October, a sign in a shop window caught my eye: “20% OFF ON EVERYTHING UNTIL THE BRIDGE IS FIXED.” Now that sign is gone. People and vehicles can cross the river into San Pancho again, and the Avenida is bustling with commerce.

Torrential rains in early September caused flooding, mudslides and bridge collapses throughout the Bahia de Banderas area. “The most rain I can remember in 50 years,” one San Pancho old-timer said. On September 6 rushing water and fallen trees slammed into the San Pancho bridge. It collapsed, creating a crisis in both economic and human terms: The village was cut off from Highway 200 and the rest of the world; families who lived near the river banks became homeless overnight; houses were inundated with up to four feet of water.

The people of San Pancho rallied. They improvised a zipline across the river and then threw together a rickety wooden footbridge. Seventy people whose homes had been washed away lived and ate for two weeks in EntreAmigos, the town’s community center. The owners of La Patrona Polo Club donated things like baby diapers and food and sent a boatload of supplies to the San Pancho beach.

High-riding SUVs could ford the river not long after the washout, but regular cars couldn’t make it across. The water was just too high. To solve this problem a raised dirt embankment was built in late October. It is only one lane, and if you don’t have your wits about you, your car could slide into the water, but the embankment serves its purpose. Regular vehicle traffic in and out of San Pancho resumed.

Local people saw a business opportunity: all those hungry bridge workers; heavy traffic all day on the embankment. New taco stands sprang up, one of which also advertises low-cost haircuts and manicures. A portable hot dog stand parks at the site. An enterprising woman sells clothing, displayed on a clothesline like clean wash. Victoriano Mendez, the artist who used to set up his easels near the bridge, has returned, painting and selling his landscapes.

Construction is almost complete on the new bridge. San Pancho is back in business.

The Night Visitor

Rustling sounds from the vacant lot behind our bedroom wall stir my sleep. Is it a gentle breeze moving among the wildly overgrown thicket of plants and weeds, a brief interlude in the night? Again, the soft swishing intrudes, scuffling footsteps, an iguana or a creature beyond imagining. I am not going to wake up, I vow, but open my eyes just enough to see the clock, 2:00 a.m. It is hardly a time for an investigation; it’s dark, too dark to see anything. I snuggle further beneath the comforter, burrowing, my head tucked inside like a tortoise.

No way, now I am awake. I strain to hear the noise again; did we lock the bedroom door I wonder? But now there is only the usual cacophony of our neighborhood: dogs, roosters, faint strains of music. I drift into an uneasy sleep.

Early morning light filters through the windows. I am groggy from a fitful night and ready for coffee. I see him as soon as I open the door to the patio beyond our bedroom. He stands perfectly still, a white horse, ghostly against the striated sky. He is tethered to a long rope which corrals him into a small area just meters away from our wall. He moves slowly among the brambles, grazing steadily. I watch him for a few minutes and make tentative horse-calling noises; he doesn’t look up.

With coffee in hand, I give him the once-over. I don’t recognize this horse as one who belongs to any of my neighbors. For one thing, he doesn’t look very healthy. I can see the outline of his ribs. And what’s more, he’s quiet, not one whinny for my benefit.

I watch him throughout the day and make an occasional attempt at communication. Head down, he ignores me. His movements track the sun as it journeys to the ocean, and he stays within its warmth. In the purple/pink haze of the sunset, he glows. In the morning, he is gone.

Tlaquache Terrorism

I wrote a blog entry a couple of years ago about the possum problem in our house and garden; there are certain animal lovers who have not spoken to me since. Though the murder plot didn't come off, there was a lot of premeditation, and for possum offenses no worse than being ugly and waking us up nightly with hisses, rustlings and mating clicks. But now the situation has become worse by several orders of magnitude.
The other night I was minding my own business, heating up some leftovers for dinner on top of the stove. I had just stirred the pot and returned to the living room when the stove exploded. The Le Creuset pot flew up and over the island and landed upside down; the burner apparatus and grills likewise, the oven door blew open and wisps of insulation streamed from the joints. The neighbors came running to see if we were still alive.
Alive, yes, but considerably shaken and also dumbfounded. The oven hadn't been on; I had been cooking daily—now I vowed never to go near the stove again. It wouldn't have been pretty if I had stirred that pot a few moments later than I did. We shut off the gas, cleaned up the mess and went out to dinner. We planned to check out the stoves in the shop on the corner in the morning and when we did, we found a nice one that went better with my dishwasher anyway.
But first we really had to make an inspection. Jonathan pulled the stove out of its slot in the counter. There sat a slightly singed tlaquache in a nest of leaves showing its vicious little teeth—teeth which it had used, in its spare time, to chew through the metal mesh-clad gas line. As a parting insult, when Jonathan drove it out from under the stove, it ran and hid under the dishwasher and he had to disconnect and pull that out, too. The possum finally scurried off into the garden, where, animal lovers, it plots with impunity—for the time being.