December 2011

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The Mexico Diaries: Fleeing to Custodio

Monday, December 12, 2011 in Mexico, Punta el Custodio

On the road to Custodio. Photo by David Lansing.

I’m not in Bucerias any more. I’ve fled. Up the coast to the house of my friends, Chris and Malin Fletcher, in Custodio. They’d invited me up last week and I had responded with an e-mail explaining I couldn’t come because my electricity didn’t work and then I had this flood, and Chris sent me a text saying, “Just come up. We have a cold beer waiting for you.”

So I did. But only after I’d spent four hours early Saturday morning draining the lake in my house. The first thing I did was throw down every beach towel I had. Which was really useless. It was like tossing a few Kleenex in a bathtub hoping that will soak up the water. All it did was leave me with seven or eight soaking beach towels weighing 50 pounds each that were impossible to wring dry. I heaped them in a pile on my patio. Then I grabbed a large sponge and a pail. But that was pretty worthless as well. Eventually what I decided to do was to take a wide broom and start pushing the water forward through the living room and out to the patio where there was a drain.

This took hours of work. But it was effective. Eventually I was able to get the bulk of the water out the door leaving me with just a shallow pond everywhere. At which point I went back to the sponge routine, sponging up water from the entryway, then the bathroom, the kitchen, the dining room, the living room, and out to the patio. Bonus: My floors looked really clean at this point. The third step was to get a dozen bath towels and mop up the remaining wet spots. Then just let the ceiling fans and the dry air remove the rest of the moisture. By nine, I was done.

I sent Miss Vicky an e-mail asking her if she knew a refrigerator repair man. She e-mailed me back to offer to come over and help me clean up (I was finished at that point) and said the fridge guy would be here first thing Monday morning. In the meantime, I again had no water. And no desire to sit around my condo worrying all weekend. So I got in the car and headed through the jungle to Custodio.

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The Mexico Diaries: A river runs through it

Friday, December 9, 2011 in Bucerias, Mexico | 2 comments

Things were looking up. After five visits by three different plumbers, the pipes under my sink had finally stopped leaking. And the newly-repaired water purifier had been reinstalled with a T in the line that now sent pure water to the back of my fridge so I could get purified ice and water from the door. This was very exciting. For years I have buying blue 10-lb. bags of ice from Oxxo and using a hammer to break off the cubes for my drinks. Now all I had to do was put a glass under the dispenser and woosh! Out came the ice. I was so excited about this development that I thought about hosting a dinner party. Just to show off my new ice-in-the-door.

And the electricity problems had been solved. True, it had cost a fortune to replace the electric panel in the garage but it was worth it. I still didn’t have air-conditioning (Señor Rivera had sent me multiple e-mails during my time in Sayulita outlining the various obstacles to procuring a new compressor and I could explain them to you but I think you would find them as trying as I did) but I wasn’t too worried about that. The air-conditioning is basically for my renters who are coming after the first of the year, Tom and Libby. Tom is a judge. Or was a judge. From Tennessee. Tom and Libby spend more time in my house than I do. In fact, when I am down at one of the pools and someone asks me where I’m staying, I explain the location to them and they invariably say, “Oh, you live in Tom and Libby’s house!”

Anyway, I don’t know how often Tom and Libby use the air-conditioning but it should at least be an option. As for me, I long ago moved out of the master bedroom and into the back guest room which is cooler and darker and better for sleeping. A ceiling fan is all you need here.

So things were really looking up. After three weeks of residency, I now had electricity and running water. I had ice-in-the-door. Woo-hoo! Then last night, about four, I got up to go to the bathroom and, in the darkness, stepped out the guest room door and into a lake. I don’t mean a little puddle of water. I mean an inch of liquid that extended from the front door to the master bedroom and the kitchen to the patio. An area just about the size of Delaware. In total darkness (I wasn’t about to touch anything electrical and electrocute myself) I swam through the living room looking for the source of the leak. I figured it had to be coming from the kitchen, but where? It didn’t seem to be coming from under the sink or from any of the hoses running from the water purifier or the fridge. Then I noticed water pouring out from behind the freezer door and when I opened it, I was sprayed in the face by a gusher shooting out from the ice maker. All the bins in the now-defrosted freezer held eight or ten inches of water. So I reached under the sink and shut off the water and then stood in an inch or so of water in my dark kitchen. At four in the morning. Wondering how on earth I was ever going to get all this water out of my house.

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The Mexico Diaries: Street oysters

Thursday, December 8, 2011 in Mexico, Sayulita | 3 comments

Street oysters in Sayulita. Photo by David Lansing.

I should try them. I really should. I’m talking about the gigantic oysters, the size of baseball mitts, sold on the streets of Bucerias and Sayulita. They’re plopped on to a slimy table shaded by a rusty umbrella, along with clams as big as starfish.

I know where they come from. I watch the divers every morning from my balcony as they harvest the shellfish right in front of my house. They’ll dive down to the muck of the Bay of Banderas for two or three minutes and come up with a rough, dark oyster, and toss it into the basket suspended in the middle of their rubber inner tubes. Eventually they’ll collect enough to swim in to shore and walk up the beach and sell their harvest to one of the little restaurants close to the beach and that’s where you’ll find those oysters. Fresh, warm, gigantic from the rich effluence that comes from the drain pipes into the bay.

I should try them. I don’t know why I don’t. Maybe it’s because it’s 85 degrees out. And the oysters sit in the hot sun. Without ice. Still, I’m sure they’re fine. Afterall, I see people buying them all the time. And standing right there in the street eating them. And they don’t drop dead. I don’t think. At least, I see them continue to walk down the street. For a little while.

I should try them. Maybe next time.

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The Mexico Diaries: The chicken taco lady

Wednesday, December 7, 2011 in Mexico, Sayulita | 1 comment

The chicken taco lady in Sayulita. Photo by David Lansing.

Another one of my favorite places for street food is this little stand on the back side of the plaza where a short, squat little woman grills up chicken all day long. You can smell her bbq going from a block away. It’s the simplest of affairs. She’s rigged up a split 50-gallon metal barrel as a barbecue and has set up a couple of plastic chairs and tables right in the middle of the cobblestone street and that’s her restaurant.

For five or six bucks you can get a whole chicken grilled over a wood fire or, for about $1.50, get a couple of chicken tacos made on homemade corn tortillas. Order up a Fanta, find a spot in the shade, and enjoy the finest, most inexpensive lunch you’ll have in Sayulita.

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The Mexico Diaries: The Kim Kardashian of Mexico

Tuesday, December 6, 2011 in Mexico, Sayulita | 3 comments

The Sayulita beach scene. Photo by David Lansing.

Murray is from Canada. I met him four or five years ago when he and his wife invited me to dinner at their house in the hills above Sayulita. It was a very unique house, round, with almost no straight walls. And almost completely open to the elements. At the time I had dinner there, Murray, who made a fortune selling key-chains or something similar in Canada, went on and on about how much they loved Sayulita. So beautiful, so charming, so hip.

Murray still has his house in Sayulita but now he lives where I do near Bucerias. He mostly just rents out his Sayulita house. I asked him why that was and he thought for a minute and said, “I’m over Sayulita.”

I guess it was like a Kim Kardashian marriage: It just couldn’t last.

I sort of see his point. The first time you come to Sayulita you’re just enchanted. There are all these jewelry stores and art galleries and even though most of the stuff is really, really bad, it’s still kind of enchanting. You talk to the owners of these galleries who have moved here from New York or Santa Barbara or Vancouver and they tell you about the woman near the plaza who not only gives great massages for $35 but also teaches salsa lessons or the group of beautiful sisters, gypsies, who sell Tahitian black pearl necklaces near the beach, and you think, wow, this place is special.

And it is. The way Woodstock was special and Mill Valley was special and everyone wanted to go there. And they did. Until they realized that it wasn’t as special when you lived there year round. It was more like a weekend thing. And that’s the way Sayulita has become for me. I like it. They way I like Katy Perry: In very small doses and only when I’m in the right mood.

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