Puerto Vallarta and San Sebastion, Mexico
“make myself understood with my arms and my feet”
“cows”
“Have a Japanese moment”
Martin
“tictactictactictactictactic”
“I cannot talk like that. The tower is listening.”
“The glingle glingle glingle of silver bars.”
Those are my notes from January 6th. Mostly quotes from our tourguide Martin (Mar TEEEN), a vivacious manin khaki, born in Italy and raised in Austria. He was married to a Japanese-Mexican and has an exquisite accent.
But the story BEGINS after getting to shore in Puerto Vallarta and being quickly shuttled from one tour facilitor to another, being pointed to signs and shuffled around. Each individual we encounter seems to have a lesser grasp of English than the last till a woman with Holly-hair stuffs us all into a taxi cab, speaks rapid-fire Spanish at the driver, hands him a folded up sheet of paper and pats the top of the car and vanishes back into the crowds.
We say “good morning” to the driver and he says “Buenos dias!!!” We say “so how are you today?” and he says “Buenos dias!!!” We say “do you understand English?” and he puts the car in gear and peels off into traffic and says “Buenos dias!!!”
I’ve decided that though high school Spanish teachers would have you believe that “buenos dias” and a smile is a friendly greeting equivelant to “good day”, I’ve discovered that in Mexico it generally means “Learn our language and buckle your seat belt, gringo”. It’s one of the rare moments where a foreign language is more economically worded than our own.
The Mexican approach to driving is similar to my old friend Paula’s approach to parking. She would race around parking lots in her tiny blue Geo screaming “I’M LOOKING FOR A HOLE FOR MY CAR I’M LOOKING FOR A HOLE FOR MY CAR” and then would spin the wheel apparently at random and dodge into a momentarily less dense area in the overall time space continuum and lodge her car into it, all the while with her passengers alternating between screams and prayers.
The Mexicans do pretty much the same thing minus the screaming. Presumably because they’re focusing on the fact that the hole they’re looking for is a moving target. After watching our cab driver deftly insert himself into the flow of traffic, maneuvering manically to get us out of the port section of town, and wheeling us onto a highway, me and my companions were beginning to relax.
Then he stops and asks for directions.
He did that three times before one of us spotted the sign for the Aerodrome (he thought we were going to the Aeroporte or something probably with a “u” in it) and pointed desperately.
We finally arrive to a closed gate, where we are told the taxi may not enter because they’d just received a large shipment of money and no cars are allowed on the premises while they’re dealing with large shipments of money.
This sounds sensible, and any excuse to leave our taxi cab behind seemed like a good one at the time.
So, what was today’s mission? While others were wandering the streets and sights of Puerto Vallarta, made famous by John Huston’s 1964 film “Night of the Iguana”, looking at the homes of movie stars and admiring various sites of absolute disinterest to me – me and my small group of intrepid explorers were going to take a small plane up into the mountains (coincidentally the site of a much more pertinent flick in my mind – Predator) to explore the small mining town of San Sebastion.
Mostly abandoned, San Sebastion used to be a thriving town of some 30,000 people – centred around mining and refining silver, John Huston placed a home up there and drew crowds as the silver mines fell off. Now there are less than 300 people Living up there for the passing tour groups, keeping the history alive (or at least remembering it) and working the coffee plantation.
Martin meets us at the aerodrome and introduces himself in beautifully accented English. He is dynamic and funny and knowledgeable as Hell. He says things like “If my English fails me, I will try and make myself understood with my hands and my feet” and “Listen to me now and then have your Japanese moments” (scolding us for wandering off and taking pictures).
In the tiny plane that vaults us out of Puerto Vallarta, he explains that the pilot is an expert and could land us on the roof of a house if we asked it of him. I’m pretty adamant in my desire to not have this proven.
He takes us up through the mountains, circling waterfalls and volcanos and changes in the flora. We look for whales but have no luck, and then after a turbulent climb we’re finally circling the valley that hides San Sebastion.
What can I say? It’s a tiny town with tiny roads. Cobblestones that have lasted 300 years and old women who keep the history of their village in their heads. We first go to the hacienda that headed up silver production where Martin launches into a comprehensive history of Mexico. We’re standing in the sun for twenty minutes as he takes us from the Aztecs to the most recent revolution. Most of it didn’t stick, but it was a pretty useful grounding for the rest of the trip.
Mexico actually means “Bellybutton of the moon”.
Good to know. Beautiful places. I’m there with grandfather, and I’m amazed that he can scramble up the hills with me, and deals with the cobbles just fine. He’s delighted by the plane ride, and overwhelmed by finding poinsettias growing wild.
We pick coffee beans from the trees and suck the sweet juices from them – the basis of kahlua. We discover ricin seeds and DON’T suck the juice from them… it’s the one place in the world where a banana tree can grow naturally next to a pine tree which is growing naturally next to cactus.
The coffee plantation is old and stone and they are slowly modernizing. The smell of the roasting beans pervades the landscape and we pick loranges from the trees – half lime half orange. I’ve never heard of anything like it. Never tasted anything like it. We watch coffee get roasted and ground – I get some of that for Amy…
We ate lunch at a gorgeous open air bar – mole chicken and tacos and hand-made tortillas. Watching everything being made and brought out to us. It was one of the best meals ever had by this rob.
We get nervous waiting for the plane (hah – tired of writing, I’m afraid – I’m actually currently sitting at Jozart Studios in California, PA and Dave Pahanish has arrived and is writing a song in the corner… makes me want to listen)… nervous waiting for the plane, can’t miss our boat. The tour has gone for an hour longer than it was”supposed to”, and though I’ve Loved every minute of it, it’s time to go.
Last thoughts:
the church of San Sebastion was beautiful – the Catholics, the Spanish – they take their holy seriously. Neon and blue and Christmas lights are tacky to my eyes, but we as a race have never built anything half so beautiful as the homes we’ve built for our gods.
horses are real here, not for sport or for tourists. You can tell they work hard.
My grandfather takes it all in but now doesn’t remember that we have a boat to go back to.
Sunset leaving Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, listening to Scott playing Sol over the horizon.
