A day at Playa Destiladeras

There is a beach, a few miles up the coast, past La Cruz, called Playa Destiladeras. The name means the Distiller’s Beach. The guide books say it got this name because there is a natural fresh water spring in the rocks above the beach but I don’t believe that. The beach is wide and sandy and usually the surf is mild—a perfect spot for launching a small panga loaded with homemade mezcal or tequila.

Tequila, or some sort of agave distillation, has been around for well over 200 years but Mexico’s regulation of tequila is relatively recent. It wasn’t until 1994 that the Tequila Regulatory Board was established. Before that, just about anybody could—and did—make a distilled spirit called tequila, no matter how foul.

Anyway, this is a story for another day. What I want to tell you about is my day at Playa Destiladeras. Because I arrived early, I was able to park along the side of the road. Usually there is no room and you have to pay to park in the dusty lot next to a palapa restaurant. I don’t mind paying the two bucks to park in the lot but the problem is that they stack everyone’s car back to back and it can be difficult if not impossible to get out if you want to leave early.

I walked up the beach, away from the palapa restaurants and the families already spread out with their blankets and barbecues and plastic ice chests full of liter bottles of Coke. I spread my towel out on the warm sand and then went for a swim. When I came back, a family had settled in just a few feet away from me. It was the typical situation of the abuela, wearing a long white dress, propped up in a chair beneath the shade of a blue nylon umbrella while around her spread the rest of the family: four or five children digging holes and covering each other in sand, their parents—no doubt brothers and sisters—sitting on beach towels and playing some card game, and a couple of small dogs running around yapping at each other and anyone passing by.

This went on for a couple of hours until an ice cream vendor came by. He was pushing a homemade wheelbarrow with a box on the front carrying paper cones and plastic spoons and some sort of a little stainless steel tub, like a pressure cooker, with the ice cream inside. The family bought cups of ice cream, chocolate I think, and sat in a loose circle slowly eating them. And then the abuela got up from her chair and, without saying a word, unrolled a straw mat on the sand under the shade. Everyone else finished up their ice cream and did the same, and then, just like it was late afternoon in kindergarten, the entire family took a siesta on the beach. For an hour, no one stirred. Not the beefy adult men who looked very uncomfortable lying on their sides on the ground, not the little children who were wet and dirty with sand, and not the yappy dogs who were silent even though they closely watched me, their eyes wide open.

And then the abuela abruptly got up, rolled up her straw mat, and sat back down in her beach chair. Within minutes everyone else was up as well. The kids resumed digging deep holes in the sand, the adults went back to their card game, and the dogs ran up and down the beach barking at the sandpipers. It all seemed so mystical to me. Why does everyone take a nap at the same time? Who determines how long they will sleep? Why does everyone get up at once? There is, of course, no explanation for it. This is just the way it is in Mexico.