Rules of the Road

I slip the knife under my pillow, inches from my fist, settle myself for sleep. It is a table knife, too dull to do much damage, but does provide a bit of bravado. I fantasize an intruder would retreat in alarm rather than reckon with this knife-wielding gringa.

I am spending the night in Los Mochis, Sinoloa, at Pemex station #4715, and I am not taking any chances.

My predilection for the pillow knife was born from reading too many swash-buckling tales of bandidos pouncing upon travelers, demanding their money and their jewels. Or else. Mexican lore, circa 1870.

Zoom back to the big picture. My husband and I overnight at Pemex stations during our drive from the Mexican border to our winter home in San Pancho because we travel by fifth wheel (truck and trailer). We do this because our cat, Tango, prefers a queen-size bed and queen-size litter box. Stuff her into an airline carrier? Not a chance. Tango rules.

It is relatively easy to find an overnight spot in the states. While Wal-Mart and other "big box" stores are no longer amenable to RVers, we have options: campgrounds, casinos, deserted office parks. Not so simple once we cross the border.

Years past we could plot a campground course from Nogales to Guymas, first night; Los Mochis, second night; Mazatlan third night; long day’s drive to San Pancho and home. The last couple of years, however, RV parks along the route have either deteriorated, closed, or sold out to make way for other endeavors. It is possible to overnight at autopista toll areas, restaurant parking lots, with permission, sometimes city streets. But security is an issue. RVs attract attention.

A chance remark led us to investigate a reasonable alternative: the ubiquitous Pemex stations along major and secondary highways. According to "Mexican Camping," a traveler’s guide by Mike and Terri Church, many of the larger stations offer showers, internet, banking, other amenities. They also offer plenty of space. Good for us and good for the dozens of trucks that may, on any given night, care to join us.

We have devised a protocol for sleeping at a Pemex: position the trailer so the door is visible, preferably under a light; park as far as possible from the semi-dobles that spew diesel fumes; tip the man who says he is security, who says he will be all eyes and ears while we sleep.

And slip a table knife under the pillow.

Things Change

Let’s say we are sailing up the west coast of Mexico in August of 1988. We are navigating with our Chart Guide, Third Edition. In the bay the chart shows Puerto Vallarta. Next is Nuevo Vallarta (that Johnny-come-lately); on to La Cruz, Punta de Mita, Sayulita, and then, in San Pancho’s location, “HUTS.”

Fast forward to last Saturday night at the polo club. The field is where the mango orchard used to be—when San Pancho had huts. Viewing is from multi-leveled terraces, some with sofas, some with tables, some with, well, beds. Queen-size, white leatherette, green suede bolsters and pillows. One expects grapes to be peeled. Twenty ponies are stabled on the opposite side of the field. Our players have nice white pants, high boots, knee guards and lovely posture. The sweet night comes on, the field is lit, and we sip wine and eat lobster as we watch the matches.

As you come up from Vallarta, just before the town where the big corn field used to be, you can’t miss the vast Cultural Center and its satellite condos. You can’t miss the fears of the townspeople about them either. Will the size and composition of the community shift San Pancho’s center of gravity? Can galleries with classy art, a 5000 square foot common room, restaurant, spa, and boutique hotels add anything of value to our happily balanced mix? There is, however, a movie theater.

Today, the seaside town of Kuta, in Bali, playground of Australians, resembles Vallarta with big hotels and hundreds of shops and restaurants. In 1970 my husband and I visited for the first time and shared a sunset on Kuta beach with a sarong-clad old guy, gone native. Just the three of us and a kid selling coconuts, the tiny thatched-roof village behind us. “You think Bali’s great now, you should have seen it in the Fifties,” he said. But then added, looking vaguely out to sea, “Of course, you had to put up with people saying, “You should have seen it in the Thirties.’ ”

Joaquina Avila, Painter

Joaquina discovered how much she enjoys painting while she was working as our housekeeper. Breezes often slammed our house doors shut, so she searched the town riverbed for large, smooth rocks, embellished them with designs, and used them as doorstops.

Next she tried painting on table runners. When I returned from a summer in the U.S., the dining room table, the buffet and the entry hall table were adorned with runners. Though I liked the geometric, Aztec-looking designs she had painted on the runners, I didn’t want to cover up the handsome grain of the wood. Joaquina agreed with my suggestion that she salvage the designs and rework the fabric into pillow covers, which she whipped up on my sewing machine. That was a remarkable feat in itself, since she uses only her right hand. Her left hand is permanently contracted into a fist because of nerve damage many years ago.

After these utilitarian projects she began painting with oils on canvas. She told me about the first time she went to Puerto Vallarta to buy paints, brushes and canvas: “I didn’t know what to ask for, and I was afraid the clerks in the store would make fun of me, so I told them I was buying art supplies for a friend. I asked them to make a list of what my friend would need. Later I went back with the list and bought those things for myself.”

“I don’t know what inspired me to want to paint,” she writes in the bio she uses for art shows. “For many years I dreamed about painting, but I didn’t dare do it because of my ancestors’ taboos. My great grandmother believed being photographed or painted could steal a person’s soul. I didn’t think that was true, but it made me fearful.”

Joaquina has not had much formal education, and certainly no art education. “I was in school until I was 16,” she tells me, “but it was a one-room schoolhouse with four grades and I kept repeating grades. After I became deaf -- I was nine at the time, and I hit my head when I dove into a creek -- I couldn’t learn along with the other kids.”

She still works in oils, and she’s also doing acrylics and watercolors. Her subjects are varied: ceramic jugs, animals and flowers are among her favorites. “And I like instructive themes that carry a message,” she says. “I call one of my best paintings ‘Advice.’ It’s of a father walking with his arm around his son’s shoulders, and he’s leaning over to talk with the boy.” She has a strong opinion about the sculptures on the malecón in Puerto Vallarta: “Don’t like them,” she says. “Too surreal.”

Joaquina has two jobs: She’s postmaster for San Pancho, and she sells fruit from a bicycle-mounted stand. She doesn’t have a lot of time to paint, but she loves doing it, and she’s no longer timid about her work. For the last several years she has displayed paintings at San Pancho’s annual Christmas art exhibit, and she’s made some sales. Last Christmas a painting she titled “Face of Death with Flowers and Birds” was snapped up right away. “I could have sold that one six times,” she says. “Next year I’ll be ready.”

Embroidery and Gunpowder

My husband and I took a trip this past Christmas into the state of Chiapas, down along the Guatemala border. Visiting Chiapas is like looking into Frida Kahlo’s closet. When you see her in self-portraits wearing those colorful costumes, you might think, Ah, those were the days…But those days are, amazingly, not gone. In village after village you can still see the women in the local huipil, a blouse with huge flowers, or banded in red and yellow, or covered in fanciful purple vegetation, all embroidered.

There’s more exotica, too. Handmade marimbas are played in churches where floors, empty of pews, are strewn with pine needles and the air is perfumed with copal incense. Photographs are not allowed of people or images of saints, their essences being at risk. In some churches, those saints are called cuaranderos/healers and the priest is replaced by the shaman.

We stayed in San Cristobal de las Casas for several days and then meandered up toward Palenque. Cresting a hill, we looked down on a village clustered around a particularly grand orange church. We pulled off the highway.

In the town we found the women wearing ponchos of white cotton with wide bands of color, either red, magenta, or purple, the colors looking as though they had just come out of the dye pot. The ponchos were embroidered around the neck and down the front with whatever contrasting color would pop the most. I’d seen them before. I think hippies used to come home with them. Frida wore one, too.

We found the street leading to the church and tried to park. But no. An official told us there was no parking on that street because of El Relámpago—The Lightning Bolt. We’d have to park on a side street. We did as told and strolled toward the church.

We passed people sweeping the middle of the street, ignoring the plastic trash on the sides. Following behind them, a man was pouring out a trail of gunpowder as another laid down, every 18 inches or so, an agave fiber-wrapped bundle like a small tamale which likely was packed with gunpowder, too. The Lightning Bolt. A sweeper said it would go off in about 20 minutes so we went on toward the village center.

A full carnival was set up in front of the church and most of the town was there. Children rode the carousel, going up and down with great glee, but in slow motion since the only power came from other children pushing it around. On the steps of the church, a crowd of dazzling poncho-clad ladies looked at us with some suspicion. Oh, for that picture. Inside three men on a marimba played bouncy religious music as worshipers sat on the floor with a thousand candles between them and the altar. It was the feast day of Santo Tomás.

When we went back out to see the Lightning Bolt, it stretched nearly a kilometer. It would be lit at the far end and head toward the church. We took a position on the street about half way, back against a house, and waited with a few other people.

Whoa! There it came! A fireball, big explosions about once a second, smoke and dust completely filling the street and billowing up over the tops of the houses. We all looked, we all ran. No analysis or assessment. Down the first side street, and then down still further as the explosions began to concuss our chests and eardrums. Everyone pressed fingers hard to ears. Still, those bombs were the loudest sounds I’ve ever heard. Too slowly and painfully, El Relámpago passed and went on to assault the center of town. When we finally could unstop our ears, we heard the echoes of the explosions bouncing crazily around the valley.

The trauma to hearing and brain was with us for the next couple of hours. The delight seems to be permanent.

Caution: Construction Ahead (Continued)

Dear readers, you may remember the house next door to ours. It was under construction when we returned to the States in May last year. Our lot, set high into the hillside, provided a birds-eye view of the building activity. Below us the first floor had been completed. A second floor, with exterior staircases, was planned. There was talk of a palapa (thatched palm) roof. Speculation surrounded the final design. No one, including our neighbor who was building the house, seemed to know. We’d have to wait and be surprised.

And we were! When we arrived in October, the house remained at one story. There were even two tinacos (water tanks) on the roof, along with piles of scrap lumber and rebar. Surely that meant the construction was complete. Good news? Not so fast. Now the roof of the house was one step away from our garden. It gave new meaning to the quote “one small step for man.”

How would you get to the roof next door? It’s simple. The completed staircases, one front and one rear, lead directly to it. The roof was an invitation to come over and visit. And if we weren’t at home, well, better yet. Our security, gone; the front door, irrelevant. We were on lockdown; all the entry doors to the house, all the time. What else could we do?

Complaining didn’t help. I tried. As friends visited, they looked across at the roof and declared, “Build a wall!”More concrete? We couldn’t do it. We loved the openness of the garden, and our view of the pueblo and the mountains. Walled in, we’d feel isolated.

“Hierro, iron,” Irma, our housekeeper, suggested one morning as we stood eyeball to eyeball with our new neighbor while she hung her laundry. We smiled, exchanged greetings across the roof, and then made a rapid retreat to the kitchen. We needed a fence.

“Iron,” we agreed. Irma said Jose Flores Garcia had a very good herreria (iron shop) in La Penita. His work was excellent, she assured us, and he’d have the best price.

My husband Bill, labored over the design. If the fence were too high, it would resemble a jail; too low, it would be easy to step over. It should have sharp points at the top, and hooks; all manner of painful appendages. We wanted it to be stately and elegant, and, at the same time, to look impenetrable. Compulsive? You could say that.

But Jose understood our dilemma and added his suggestions to Bill’s drawings. He designed the perfect fence, a lovely addition to our garden. It’s not the eyesore we anticipated. It adds charm and security. Are there more surprises ahead? Will there be a second floor? Stay tuned.

Pushing PV

Getting my house guests out of San Pancho and into Puerto Vallarta is a tough sell. The appeal of our little village is such that even hard core explorers turn parochial, reluctant to leave for a look at the world-class resort town an hour to the south.

“Take this,” I tell them, as I all but force a map with a walking tour into their hands. “Zigzag between the boardwalk and the hills above it. Vallarta has its charm. Go see.”

They go, but they don’t see. As a rule, after a stroll down the boardwalk, they say they feel besieged by hawkers and bus fumes. They rarely climb Vallarta’s steep back streets, lined with balconies above, the tiny spans overtaken by begonias, geraniums, “oreja de elefante” and “pata de leon,” color blazing from the rusted coffee cans that make do as pots. They don’t experience the renowned warmth of Vallartenses who give up the narrow sidewalks and offer a soft “Buen dia” as they pass. They miss peeking through the open front doors in Gringo Gulch that reward the nosy with sweeping views of the city and sea below. Instead my guests opt for an early out, after a run-of-the-mill lunch at a tourist trap, and return to San Pancho to declare PV a bust.

To each his own, I concede. Flattering, too, that San Pancho has captured their hearts and minds. Still, it seems a shame to forego such an array of sights, shops, cuisine, and busy beaches made for people-watching, all of it right down the road.

Another Police Story

Guadalajara, late afternoon. Traffic heading west, toward Zapopan, a thick slow braid in which cars, trucks, buses weave in and out of three lanes.

Impatient drivers rev radio, punch horn.

The cacophony absorbs the wail of the police siren. Tired, focused on getting back to San Pancho after a two-day shopping trip, we are oblivious to the motorcycle cop until he materializes alongside our truck. He cuts in front then motorcade-style proceeds ahead of us, one block, two blocks. At the first intersection he beckons we should turn right and follow him. He parks. We park.

Leaning into the driver’s window, inches from my husband’s face, he props elbows on the sill, smiles hard and bright, his teeth a double row of chicles.

"Buenas tardes," says Win, my husband.

"Good afternoon," says the cop. A Cheshire grin implies he is pleased to bag a nice big truck, loaded with furniture, U.S. license plate. Must be ricos.

"Un problema?" asks Win.

"You are going too fast. Your license, please."

Win switches to English. "Traffic is slow. We are going the same speed as the others," he says while fishing inside his wallet.

"But we have photo proof!"

"I want to see it."

"The radar truck is over there." The cop waves his arm too fast to ascertain direction.

Win cranes for a look. No police truck visible.

Banter begins, guy talk about motorcycles, diesel trucks, the high price of tolls on the autopista, the high price of living in Mexico. As the men make small talk I mentally calculate how many pesos we have left, how we might offer a small bribe without causing more trouble. Bribes are illegal. Offer a mordida to the wrong official and you might see the inside of a Mexican jail. I can spare $200 pesos, about $20 U.S.

"Now, sir, I need the truck registration."

"And I need proof we were speeding."

"I must write an infraccion for $1,000 pesos." He pulls a pad from his pocket, begins to scribble.

"What! This is not justified!"
The cop checks us out. "Okay," he says. "Different infacccion." He points to the seatbelt hanging on a hook behind Win’s head. "You are not wearing a seat belt. Please pay me $400 pesos."

"But I’m wearing a seat belt," I say, tired of discussion. "So we should pay only $200 pesos."

"How much money you have?" he asks me.

"I need money for gas and tolls. I guess I can spare $200 pesos."

Passing a paperback through the window, he tells me to put the money inside. I make a show of smoothing bills, closing the book, returning it.

"You have trouble in Guadalajara again, you just say you know officer #91200. You will be okay." With a brilliant smile he zooms away.

"Right," my husband says, snapping his seat belt into place. "Number 91200 must be cop code. Probably means these gringos are good for $200."