Bucerias

Miss Vicky playing with Reno in front of El Brujo.

Miss Vicky came by today to see how things were going. Fine, I told her, except I had no air-conditioning and there was a small lake in my kitchen from multiple leaks beneath my sink. “I don’t think you should stay inside your condo all day,” she said. “You need to get out.” She was looking at the bloody caesar in my hand and probably mentally noting that it was not yet noon on a Tuesday.

I can’t go out, I told her. I’m waiting for Bulmaro or one of the repairmen all the time. They have this amazing knack for showing up just when I’ve gone to take the garbage out and then it takes another two days to reschedule them. Well, why don’t you come to dinner with me in Bucerias, she said. She would be dining with friends at El Brujo.

There are a number of restaurants situated right on the beach in Bucerias. They are, for the most part, indistinguishable from one another. They all have plastic tables and chairs in the sand and are shaded by frayed umbrellas advertising Corona or Pacifico and serve large but not particularly good margaritas and local seafood. The two things I like best about restaurants like El Brujo are drinking while wiggling your bare feet in the sand and watching the sun set. Also, if you have a dog, as Miss Vicky does, you can eat while throwing a stick in to the surf for them to retrieve.

So Miss Vicky played with her large mutt, Reno, and I explained to Miss Peggy and Miss Lisa the problems I was having with leaks and such in my condo. “You should just fire this guy,” said Miss Peggy. “Absolutely,” said Miss Lisa. I explained to them how Señor Rivera’s wife had died of cancer a little over a year ago and how he was raising two little boys by himself. “Well, that’s a bummer,” said Miss Peggy, “but that doesn’t excuse him from doing a shitty job managing your property.”

Miss Vicky sat back down, exhausted from throwing the stick for Reno, and we ordered dinner along with another round of margaritas. I’m going to bring my plumber over to your place to look at things, Miss Vicky said. I told her I didn’t think that was necessary since Señor Rivera had already scheduled a plumber to check things out. Yeah, said Miss Vicky, but my guy is really good. He can also hook your water purifier up to the ice maker in your fridge so you don’t have to buy bags of ice anymore.

Well, I didn’t know about that. I’d resisted doing that after buying my fridge because it seemed like there were always plumbing problems involved with automatic ice makers. Still, it would be nice not to have to keep a 10-lb. bag of ice from Oxxo in the freezer. It made it so difficult for finding room for the vodka.

As we were eating our chicken poblano, she made a call and it was all arranged. Her plumber would be over at my condo tomorrow morning. Now I just have to break the news to Señor Rivera.

Bulmaro works on the pipes beneath my sink.

Friday morning Bulmaro was back at my door with his screwdriver and pliers. He’d come to disconnect my water purifier and take it to the water purifier repairman. Later that day Señor Rivera called me to say that the water purifier was broken and a part needed to be replaced. The part was in Guadalajara and wouldn’t arrive until Monday. You’d think that with a population of over 250,000 people that you could find a part for a water purifier in Puerto Vallarta but you’d be wrong. You must go to Guadalajara to get the part.

So this morning, there was Bulmaro again, standing at my door holding the water purifier out in front of him as if it were a baby he was handing back to me. It’s all good now, he told me. An hour later he’d connected it to the labyrinth of pipes and hoses under my kitchen sink. “It’s okay now,” he said.

Are you sure? I asked him. Last year when he’d replaced a filter in my water purifier, he’d also told me it was okay but it had leaked after he left.

He smiled and nodded. “Es perfecto.”

Bulmaro left and I went back to my office where I was working on a story. An hour later, I went in to the kitchen to make myself another cup of coffee and noticed a small puddle on the floor. I opened the cabinet beneath the sink. The whole area was flooded. A couple of hours later, Bulmaro was back. He had his screwdriver and pliers with him. He poked around at the pipes and flexible tubes under the sink, made an adjustment here and there, and proclaimed the whole thing in perfect working order. I thanked him profusely. An hour later the puddle on my kitchen floor was even larger than before. I called Señor Rivera who informed me that, according to Bulmaro, there was a problem with the pipes under my sink which is why there was water leaking. Yes, I said, I know that. So I think, said Señor Rivera, that what we should do is get a plumber. Would I like him to do that? Yes, I said, that would be good. “Perfecto,” said Señor Rivera, “already we are working on it.”

An hour later he e-mailed me to tell me that he had gotten ahold of the plumber. He would be here by Wednesday if not earlier. In the meantime, Bulmaro would regularly check in with me. So stepping gingerly around the ever-expanding puddle in my kitchen, I made myself a large margarita and went down to the pool, confident in the knowledge that already Señor Rivera and Bulmaro were working on things.

A good margarita is one of those things that seems easy enough to make—like an omelette—yet so few people do it well. So let me tell you the key to making the perfect margarita: balance.

Have you read Michael Ruhlman’s book Ratio? If not, you should. It’s illuminating. Ruhlman posits that if you know the simple proportions of things like biscuit dough (3:1:2—3 parts flour, 1 part fat, and 2 parts liquid) it will, as he says, “unchain you from recipes and set you free.” Ruhlman doesn’t have a ratio for cocktails, but I do: 2:1—2 parts base to 1 part modifier. For instance, to make a Manhattan, dump 2 ounces of bourbon and 1 ounce of red vermouth in a shaker of ice, shake, and strain into a martini glass. What could be simpler?

For a cocktail like the margarita, which has more than one ingredient, you just expand the ratio. Here, you have a double base, tequila and lime juice, and two modifiers, Cointreau and simple syrup, so the ratio is 2:2:1:1—2 parts tequila, 2 parts lime juice, 1 part Cointreau, and 1 part simple syrup. (Another way to think of it is that the 1 part Cointreau is modifying the taste of the 2 parts tequila while the 1 part simple syrup is modifying the tartness of the 2 parts lime juice. So it’s still a 2:1 ratio.) This ratio alone would give you a margarita as good or better than any you’ve ever had. But now let’s make it even better. To do that we need to focus on our ingredients.

First of all, it’s imperative that you use a very good 100% agave tequila. That’s what we want to taste—that agave spirit. You can make a valid argument for using either a blanco or reposado. Thomas Schnetz of Restaurante Doña Tomás in Oakland, one of my favorite Mexican restaurants, insists on using a blanco tequila, El Tesoro, and I have no argument with that. Personally, I think a reposado brings out more of the roasted agave flavor, so that’s what I use. Centenario is my go-to tequila, but I also love El Tesoro or Siete Leguas when I can find it.

The lime juice is almost as important as the tequila. First of all, it can never come out of a bottle. If you have some sweet and sour mix in your fridge, like the unnaturally radiant green-colored Jose Cuervo Margarita Mix, I want you to go pour it on your blueberry bushes (they’ll appreciate the acidity). What you want are fresh limes. And not the big ol’ honking store limes the size of baseballs but the little Mexican limes (also called Key limes or bartender limes) the size of golf balls. These smaller limes are sweeter and not as acidic (and remember, it’s all about the balance). To get two ounces of lime juice, you might need to squeeze four or five limes, depending on the time of year they are harvested and the freshness of the limes.

Next comes the orange liqueur. Forget about Grand Marnier. It may make the “Cadillac” of margaritas, but do you drive a Cadillac? You do not. So don’t make a Cadillac margarita. Also avoid the cheap crap like Gran Gala. It’s yucky and will make your margarita taste yucky. Cointreau is great although I personally prefer the Mexican version, Controy. But you can’t buy Controy in the U.S. (the makers of Controy have a licensing agreement with the French producers of Cointreau which prevents the Mexican version from being sold in the U.S.—but next time you’re in Mexico, bring home a bottle of Controy and try it).

Finally, you will need some simple syrup. When in Mexico, I use a commercially produced version called Jarabe (which just means “syrup” in Spanish). It can’t possibly taste better than simple syrup you make yourself, but it does. Sort of how like Mexican Coke tastes better than U.S. Coke, I guess.

So now we’re ready to make the best damn margarita you’ve ever had. Get a martini shaker and fill it 2/3 with cubed ice (not crushed). Add two ounces of your most excellent 100% agave tequila, two ounces of fresh-squeezed Mexican lime juice, one ounce Cointreau and one ounce simple syrup. Shake. Strain into a margarita or martini glass, salted or not, as you prefer, and sip.

Ecstasy.

One last secret: The only way to make this cocktail better is to add a scant teaspoon of Princesa brand tamarindo jarabe de pulpa. You’ll have to sleuth around to find that, but if you get it, oh-my-god—you will have created la reina de margaritas. Now if it was only possible to get one this good in Mexico….

Bucerias street dog. Photo by David Lansing.

Early this morning there was a knock on my door. There stood Bulmaro, a screwdriver in one hand, a pair of pliers in the other. “It’s okay now,” he said, snarling his lip in a brash Marlon Brando way.

“What’s okay?”

“El agua caliente.”

“Really?”

He shrugged, as if to say, Of course…don’t be ridiculous. If I say I have fixed it, I have fixed it.

He motioned me to follow him outside my condo to where a little concrete hut houses my hot water heater. He opened the wooden doors and pointed. “Mira.”

I looked. The blocky little heater, full of rust and corrosion, was bubbling away. Bulmaro touched it, burning his fingers, to prove that it was indeed hot.

“What was the problem?”

Bulmaro reached into his back pocket and took out a little box of matches with a drawing of the Virgin of Guadalupe on the top. “El fuego estaba apagado,” he explained. “But now it is okay.”

I thanked him profusely, not bothering to ask why he hadn’t lit the pilot light yesterday when he was here and I’d first noticed that I had no hot water or, even, why it hadn’t been lit over a week ago when I’d asked Señor Rivera to check and make sure everything was in working order. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that Bulmaro had come over early in the morning and lit my pilot light and now I would at least be able to have hot water. My purifier still sat moribund under the sink so I could not drink the water, but at least I could bathe in it. As Señor Rivera would have said, “Already we are working on everything.”

A flower vendor in Bucerias. Photo by David Lansing.

A little over a week before I arrived in Bucerias, I e-mailed the man who takes care of my property, Señor Rivera, and asked him to go through the condo and check everything to make sure it was in good working order. Turn on the air-conditioning, I urged him, and let the hot water run for awhile. Flush the toilets and see if the shower heads are blocked with the heavy minerals and salts that course through our water supply system like cholesterol in a heart-attack victim. Turn on lights, see if the internet is working, and make sure the linens have been washed.

Three days later I got a one-sentence reply: “Everything is perfect.”

Señor Rivera is a man of few words.

When I opened my front door, the sequestered heat and humidity inside my closed abode blasted me backwards. I opened doors and windows to get some air circulating and then decided to speed things up by turning on the air-conditioning, which I almost never do. Except the little red light on the Mexican thermostat did not come on. And no air was coming through the vents.

I went to wash my hands but there was no hot water. And in the kitchen, the light was also out on my water-purifier. No air, no hot water, no clean water. Feeling just slightly annoyed, I opened up my laptop to send Señor Rivera a quick e-mail to complain. Except I didn’t have internet service. Instead, I hiked back up the hill to the palapa next to the administration offices of my complex where there is slow but free internet and sent him a rather long message complaining about all the things that weren’t working. Then I sat there on a sagging couch in the outdoor living room beneath the palapa and waited. Half an hour later, I got a response from Señor Rivera: “Bulmaro is on his way.”

Bulmaro is Sancho Panza to Señor Rivera’s Don Quixote. He is lovable and sleepy-eyed and a man who will do whatever Señor Rivera requests him to do, even if he has no idea how to do it. In fact, he usually has no idea how to fix the problems in my condo but he always shows great interest in them nonetheless.

I walked back to my condo and waited. An hour or so later, Bulmaro was at my front door holding his hat in both hands. “Un problema?” he asked. Like Señor Rivera, Bulmaro is a man of few words. I flipped the air-conditioning switch to show him it didn’t work. He doubted my technique and had me move aside while he tried it for himself. When it refused to turn on, he tried it again, this time moving the switch more slowly. No success. Next he flicked it on and off several times rapidly. Nothing. Finally he shrugged. “No funciona,” he declared.

Clearly, I said. But what can we do about it? He held up a finger as if the solution has just appeared to him. He got on his cell phone and called Señor Rivera. Mister David’s air-conditioner does not work, he told his boss. A few other words were exchanged and then Bulmaro handed the phone to me.

“Bulmaro says your air-conditioner is not working,” said Señor Rivera. “That is why you cannot get cold air.”

Ah.

After a few more revelations along this line, Señor Rivera determined that perhaps the best thing was to call an air-conditioner repair man. Which he would do immediately. Meanwhile, Bulmaro would continue his inspection of my condo. Which he admirably did, quickly determining that my hot-water heater wasn’t working nor was my water-purifier. He called Señor Rivera to report back and then the phone was once again handed to me.

“Bulmaro says your water-purifier does not work,” Señor Rivera informed me. A repairman would be needed and he, Señor Rivera, would call them immediately. As well as a plumber. As for the internet, the Telecable office was already closed. He would call them in the morning.

“So you see,” Señor Rivera happily told me, “already we are working on everything.” And with that, Bulmaro quietly slipped out of my condo and rode away into the sunset on his little scooter.