Sayulita

Here’s an amazing thing: if you drink Manhattans when you’re in Mexico, as I do, you won’t be able to find bourbon—any bourbon—let alone maraschino cherries. Instead, you have to bring your own from the States.

However, the trade-off is that you can buy freshly-made, still-warm tortillas just about anywhere. And no matter where you get them, they will be better than anything you can buy in the States.

photos by David Lansing

When I’m in Sayulita, I get my tortillas, after a morning at the beach, at this little market called Alas Blancas (White Wings). It’s easy to find because it’s got a giant tequila bottle and a huge beer can on the roof.

It’s like a little 7-11 except where a 7-11 stocks 20 facings of 50 products, a Mexican market carries 10 facings of 300 products. They do it by not devoting a huge amount of space to the big-margin items like Coke and potato chips. Yes, you can buy Coke and chips at a Mexican market, but you won’t find a whole aisle devoted to that crap.

Instead, you get an end-aisle with 15 different types of hot sauce! Even though it’s hard to make much money selling hot sauce. And then there will be two or three plastic coolers, usually close to the cash register, filled with still-steaming corn tortillas. Three dozen will cost you less than a buck. So obviously they’re not making much money here either. But, hey, in Mexico, this is what the people want—hot sauce and tortillas. Not 20 different types of tortilla chips (in fact, in Mexico, people think you’re stupid to buy tortilla chips. They say, “My friend, why don’t you just make your own?” Because obviously if you buy three dozen fresh corn tortillas every day, which almost everyone does, you’re going to have some left over. So why not fry them in a little oil yourself? Not only do you save yourself $3.99 by not buying Doritos but they taste better.)

Do you know about Mexican dichos? They are like our proverbs. One of my favorite dichos goes like this: Sin dinero no baila el perro. Which means, Without money the dog doesn’t dance.

So if you want the dog to dance, make your own damn tortilla chips. That’s a Lansing dicho. 

You’ll find some of the best food in Mexico comes from the streets. The same is true of the art. Forget the galleries with their dreamy paintings of Aztec warriors or those faux-Waterford crystal dolphins they sell in galleries along the malecon in Puerto Vallarta. Instead, check out the murals, which are everywhere. Particularly the murals not meant to be art, per se, but explanatory or even advertising.

photos by David Lansing

For instance, one of my favorite murals is on the wall of a public restroom on the beach in Platanitos. It’s both useful and amusing. An old guy, who may or may not be blind, is shaking the dew off his lily before an open door. Even if you don’t speak Spanish and know that a caballero is a Mexican cowboy, you’ll be able to figure out that this is definitely the men’s room.

A lot of the shops in Sayulita have murals. I like this one just off Av. Revolucion—Revolucion del Sueño. The vivid red color, the pillows on a bench in front of the shop. Since it’s kind of a hippy shop, the name also has double meanings. Revolucion playing on both the street name and some of the Che-centric items inside. And sueño or dreams referencing the pillows and other bedding items as well as the bong pipes in the back of the shop.

Even this beer truck, to me, is a great example of Mexican street art. The swirled colors perfectly matching the sky. And the driver, pretty much invisible from the waist up, effortlessly balancing five cases of Victoria and Corona beer. A scene straight out of a Mexican version of Cirque du Soleil.  

The best salesmen in the world live in Mexico. In Sayulita, I have seen guys on the street selling sacks of dried camerones, homemade fireworks, the little mango- or apple-flavored sweets called huesitos (little bones), 3-day old newspapers, and 8-track tapes of the Carpenters (the only item I was seriously tempted to purchase; the theme for my high school prom was We’ve Only Just Begun).

I have a theory that if you are a patient man (and I am not), you could just sit in the plaza in Sayulita and sooner or later, someone would come by offering to sell you whatever it was you needed.

A couple of fishermen drive around the plaza almost every afternoon in a white pickup truck. The more grizzled-looking of the two stands in the back of the truck holding up their catch of the day and calling out, in the lovely sing-songy Mexican voice, “Cam-er-on-es,” or “Pul-po.”

photos by David Lansing

Around Dia de los Muertos last year I saw him holding a 15- or 20-lb. snapper high over his head as if it were Super Bowl trophy. I thought about buying it and grilling it up zarandeado-style, which is a local way of marinating a whole fish in soy sauce, lime juice, olive oil, garlic, and chiles—or whatever you feel like throwing in there. It would have been fabulous. Except…I just kept wondering how long this guy had been hauling around this snapper in the back of his pickup truck. I mean, did he catch it this morning? Last night? Three days ago?

Same thing with the shrimp he sells. Mind you, it’s 84 degrees here today. So do I really feel like getting a pound of good-sized camerones that have probably spent more time sitting on a tailgate than the average Texas Longhorns fan?

Then there’s this little woman who pushes a cart around the plaza selling balloons, artificial flowers, mops, and 10-foot-long feather dusters dyed the colors of the Mexican flag. I have no idea what you’d do with those. But that didn’t stopped me from buying one. It’s a safer option than shrimp off the back of a truck, don’t you think?