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.