January 2011

Signe looking much more relaxed after arriving safe and sound in Mexico. Photo by David Lansing.

Mechas and Signe, friends of the Fletchers, were flying in to Puerto Vallarta. Because they weren’t due to arrive until early evening and you just don’t drive through the jungle north of PV unless you absolutely have to, Chris had asked me if there was a condo near me where they could spend the night before heading north towards Custodio. I arranged for them to stay in a friend’s unit and was cutting up a chicken that I planned to grill for their dinner when I got a call from Chris around five or so. There had been a problem at the PV airport, he told me, and it was closed. Nobody seemed to know when it would reopen. Maybe later in the evening; maybe tomorrow. But the bottom line was that Mechas and Signe would not be arriving soon and, worse yet, he had no idea where they were. Mechas had departed from Los Angeles earlier in the day; Signe had been coming from Wisconsin. He said he’d call me when he had more information.

A couple of hours later he called back to say he’d located Mechas. She’d been diverted to Guadalajara. The airline was telling her that even if the Puerto Vallarta airport opened later that night, it would be Monday before she could get a flight. And although he hadn’t gotten hold of Signe, he’d contacted her airline and learned that her flight had been diverted to Mexico City. An hour later, he called again to say he still had no idea what was going on with Signe but Mechas had decided to take a bus to Puerto Vallarta from Guadalajara. It was scheduled to get in sometime after midnight.

Mechas I wasn’t worried about. She’s a very resourceful woman originally from Columbia who speaks Spanish and has traveled all around the world with her husband, Greg. She’s probably been through more strange adventures than I have and has always managed to get through difficult situations just fine. Signe was a little more troublesome. Signe is the life-long friend of Chris’ mother, Sally. They went to college together umpteen years ago and have been close chums ever since. Like Sally, she’s an octogenarian; oddly enough, both Sally’s and Signe’s husbands died within a week of each other. Signe is spry and clever and has done a fair amount of traveling herself, but she was alone on this trip and, from what Chris had told me, not only didn’t have a cellphone that worked in Mexico but also hadn’t brought any contact numbers with her. She assumed when she boarded her flight in Wisconsin that she’d make it to Puerto Vallarta and someone would be waiting for her. I’m sure the last thing she imagined was that she’d end up in Mexico City.

You have to give Chris Fletcher a lot of credit. I don’t know how he did it but he was finally able to find out what flight she’d been on that got her to Mexico City and then contacted the airline there and found out that Signe had been put on another flight and was headed to Puerto Vallarta. The flight was scheduled to arrive around 11 which, by the time he discovered all this, was less than half an hour away. This was his mom’s best friend and the last thing he wanted was for Signe to get to Puerto Vallarta and be lost and have no idea what she should do or where she should go. So he started calling various Puerto Vallarta transportation companies, most of which were closed. Finally he got ahold of a guy who told him that he had already left the airport and was on his way home. Fletcher offered him the proper incentive and the guy immediately turned around and headed back for the airport. Somehow he found Signe in the arrivals area and convinced her that she was to go with him.

It must have been around 11:30 when there was a knock on my door and standing there was a little man carrying a couple of pieces of luggage. Standing a few feet behind him, in the darkness of the hallway, was Signe. She was pale and shaking a bit so I got her inside and sat her on the couch, took care of the driver, and then offered her a cocktail. “I don’t suppose you have bourbon down here, do you?” she said. I told her I did. I told her I also had red vermouth and cherries and could make her a Manhattan if she’d like.

“Oh, you blessed angel!” she exclaimed. I made her an extra big cocktail. Her hands shook holding it. She told me all about her adventures, which had begun at 3:30 or 4 o’clock that morning, and how she had no idea what she was going to do when she got into Puerto Vallarta and how thankful she’d been that there was the limo driver there to meet her and bring her to my house and how absolutely lovely it was to be drinking a Manhattan. And then about midnight I took her upstairs to the other condo and showed her around and let her pick the room she wanted to sleep in and, having topped off her drink, told her to crawl into bed, finish off her cocktail, and get a good night’s sleep. We’d sort everything else out in the morning.

Then I went back downstairs. And waited to hear from Mechas who was still out there somewhere in the jungle on a Mexican bus winging her way towards Puerto Vallarta in the dead of night.

Our panga pulling away from Yelapa. Photo by David Lansing.

We had finished our lunch and were sitting around drinking beer when Ruso came by and we invited him to sit down with us. I asked him a few questions about himself and this is what he told me: His name wasn’t really Ruso, that was just the nickname they gave him because he was Russian, from St. Petersberg. He’d been living in Puerto Vallarta for 20 years. I asked him how a Russian had come to Puerto Vallarta and he shrugged and said, It just happened.

I don’t think so, I told him. A Russian from St. Petersberg doesn’t accidentally end up in Puerto Vallarta or anywhere in Mexico for that matter. I asked him what he did before coming to Mexico and he shrugged again and said this and that. Did you work for the government or the KGB? I asked him. He snorted. Then he said he was going to go smoke a little weed and did we want to join him. It was interesting because while he was sitting there on the beach talking with us, he never indicated to anyone at the restaurant that he wanted anything yet someone brought him a beer and then someone else came over and gave him a cigarette.

I made some joke about the Canadians sitting near us and Ruso said, That’s okay. They’re better than the Americans. I don’t really like Americans, he said. I asked him why and he said, They are arrogant and stupid. I said, You know we’re Americans and he said, Yes, I know. Then he started talking about Cubans. I worked in Cuba, he said. I hate Cuba. I asked him if he had worked in Cuba for the Russian government and he said, Yes, of course. Why else would anyone go to Cuba? The Cubans are the laziest people in the world and Cuba is the dirtiest country I have ever been in, he said. I told him I loved Cuba, that it was one of my favorite places in the world. He snorted. Cuba is a piece of shit, he said. And Cubans are even lazier than Mexicans.

You’re a bit of a racist, aren’t you? I said.

Yes, he said, shrugging. I’m a racist. So what? That’s something else I hate about Americans. They like to call other people racists, thinking they are not, but Americans are the biggest racists in the world.

This was all very interesting because here we were on the beach drinking beer in a secluded little fishing village in Mexico listening to a Russian ex-pat expound on how much he hated Americans and Cubans. I was through with the conversation. I got up from the table and excused myself, finding a chair further down the beach, but I could hear Carlos and Ruso talk about Afghanistan and Cuba and god knows what else until the Russian remembered that he was going to go smoke a joint and left.

Before he left, he told us that we could take a different water taxi back to Puerto Vallarta if we wanted. I asked him if we should look for it at the pier or in front of the beach. He told us it would be in front of the beach about 15 minutes before three. A little before three, there was no boat so I asked one of the waiters if he knew where Ruso was and he said he was having his lunch back in the kitchen. I asked him to get him for me. Ruso came out a few minutes later. Where is the boat? I asked.

Ah, he said, as if he’d just remembered. He pointed at a panga that was tied up at a short pier that belonged to the little boho-chic luxury hotel, Vernana, across the bay. People were climbing out of the panga and five or six people were standing on the pier waiting to board. That’s your water taxi, Ruso said. You should hurry. It leaves in five minutes.

We grabbed our towels and bags and hurried as quickly as we could across the heavy sand. Everyone had boarded the boat and the crew was loosening the ropes. They saw us rushing to get there and held the boat and we quickly hopped on and the water taxi pushed off. As we slowly pulled out of the bay, I looked back and saw Ruso standing at the edge of the water watching us, a cigarette dangling from his lips. He raised a hand and gave us a weak wave. I flipped him the bird.

It took awhile but Bolillo finally sold this woman one of his necklaces. Photo by David Lansing.

While we were passing time on the beach a parade of vendors came by trying to sell us hammocks and ceramic bowls and cheap silver bracelets and all the other things that vendors try to sell you on every beach in Puerto Vallarta the only difference here being that almost all the vendors spoke a little English and seemed to have a sense of humor about what they were doing. One guy was particularly amusing. He came by with a tray full of shell jewelry, asking us to “Please, have a look,” and when we said “No, gracias,” he said, rather sotto voce, “Come on, take the time, I have a family to feed.” He went on, in Spanish, to mumble that he wished he could sit in a nice chair on the beach and drink cold beer, that the beer looked very delicious and he was thirsty, but he had to make a living, he had to walk up and down this nearly deserted beach begging people to look at his bracelets which, if they took the time, they saw were not too bad, in fact they were rather pretty and certainly better than the loco coming up behind him who carried an iguana on his shoulder and expected people to pay 100 pesos to take a picture of something you could find in the jungle any time you wanted.

There was a couple from Canada sitting next to us and they asked Carlos what the man was going on about and Carlos laughed and gave them the short version and then the woman got up from her beach chair and came over to look at the bracelets which was all the man needed. She went through his entire tray and didn’t find anything that suited her but the vendor, whose name was Bolillo—like the hard roll—said, Come on now, I have wasted half my day showing you my necklaces and bracelets and surely you can find one you like, one you can take home and give as a lovely present for someone, perhaps your mother, you can’t expect me to stand here all day showing you what I have only to go away empty-handed. I am a family man, with many children, and it is hard work walking up and down this beach, so please don’t tell me that there is nothing you like. If that is the case, I will go and get some other bracelets. Just tell me what you like. Maybe silver? Or jade?

Well, this was too much for the Canadian woman. He had in fact spent at least 20 minutes showing her his wares and it was obvious that he was not going to go away until she bought something so she picked out a couple of cheap silver bracelets and then Bolillo started handing her necklaces to go with them, saying it made no sense to buy just the bracelets, certainly she wanted a necklace to go with them and he had many to show her, until she said fine and pointed to a red beaded necklace with a too-big polished shell on the end and bought that as well. Okay, said Bolillo, that is good. It’s not much but at least now I can go back to my family and say, Look, I have sold a few things, just enough so we can eat today. It’s not much but it’s okay. And the Canadian woman gave him a large bill and when Bolillo complained that he did not have the proper change she said Never mind. Keep it. Buy yourself a beer.

“Yo no bebo,” said Bolillo and with that he headed down the beach to another group of tourists trying to tan themselves in the weak sun.

Bars flanking the waterfall at Yelapa.

It wasn’t that the last time I’d gone to Yelapa everything was ideal. That was in November, a little over a year ago, and I’d taken a party boat out of the Puerto Vallarta Marina not realizing that I would end up spending five hours of the seven hour excursion on the boat with a bunch of drunken tourists and only two hours on the beach. Still, those two hours seemed magical—the golden sand, the warm, calm blue waters, the friendly locals. So this time I thought I’d get smart and take the water taxi from the Los Muertos Pier but it didn’t work out the way I expected. But then again, it never does in Mexico.

Rather than landing on the beach, the panga headed for a pier on the other side of the cove and Ruso announced that he would lead us on a short hike to a waterfall. Which was fine because we’d planned on doing that anyway. I’d heard that the waterfall was a 20 to 30 minute hike through the jungle. And it was. But it wasn’t like hiking to a waterfall in Yosemite. Instead, the path out of town passed by a motley collection of little shacks and makeshift abodes where vendors hustled everything from rosewood dolphins to homemade raicilla. At the waterfall itself were a couple of simple little bars, just plastic chairs nestled in the rocks and wooden tables where you could get raicilla or beer, though we didn’t see any customers, perhaps because it was too early in the day.

We’d pretty much had enough of Ruso by now so we slipped away from the group and headed back down the path, trying to figure out how to get to the other side of the bay to the playa. We passed by a couple of sad-looking horses carrying kids on their backs up the hill and by any number of little tiendas selling Chiclets or Doritos or finger bananas. The path kept going up and down the hillside and sometimes we’d get lost and end up in someone’s backyard and we’d excuse ourselves to the tired looking residents who’d say nothing as they watched us slip down another path or through a gate trying to find the logical way out. Eventually we made it down to the estuary only to discover that we were still on the wrong side and the water was too deep to cross.

We asked a local how to get down to the playa and he told us to go back up the way we’d come, past the clinic, and then look for a little path to the right. Even then we got lost. And we weren’t the only ones. A young couple that had passed us in the opposite direction earlier came back our way and asked us if we knew how to get down to the beach and we told them we thought so and they followed us as we went through little alleys and down hillside paths until we finally found a shallow spot in the estuary where we could get across to the beach.

We walked across the heavy sand past most of the palapa restaurants until we got to Oasis which is where Ruso had told us to go. I don’t know why we actually went there. No doubt Ruso had a deal with the restaurant to bring his water taxi clients there as there didn’t seem to be any difference between Oasis and the other half-a-dozen beach restaurants. One had blue umbrellas and another white and another red, but that was about all that seemed to differentiate them. We put our stuff down on the lounge chairs in front of the restaurant but the tide was high and the surf big and it wasn’t five minutes before waves had climbed all the way up the beach and was washing over our chairs so we retreated to a table under the palapa and ordered beers and looked at the menu. None of us were really starving but it was a cool day and the surf was high so we sat there and drank our beers and after awhile we ordered fish tacos and arrachera. The food wasn’t bad; it just wasn’t good.  It was like almost all the food you order at any beach restaurant in Mexico. We finished our lunch and ordered more beers and then I went for a walk along the beach but there really wasn’t much to see and the sand, which was coarse and large, hurt my feet so I went back to the restaurant and sat in a chaise and watched the pangas that waited for the surge of the waves to gun their engines and motor as fast as they could straight for the beach where they would then empty their boats of passengers. I did this for quite awhile; we still had several hours to wait until the water taxi came to pick us up. In the morning I had wondered if four hours in Yelapa would be enough time; now I was thinking about trying to get an earlier boat back.