sunset 5/30
taking a sunset beach walk. beautiful.
Archive for May, 2005
Amusing amazon reviews
very funny, well written amazon reviews
an interesting read. makes me jealous that I don’t have more time to write.
mosbef art
i created this piece of art for the header graphic for my sister’s photography site. I don’t think she’ll use it.
Day trip to Chacala part 2
For a few weeks now, Marcia and I have been talking about taking a mini-vacation. Living in our small little town is paradise but it’s good to get out, every now and then. Adventure is good for the soul.
Saturday, Marcia and I headed up the coast about an hour to a small beach called Chacala, a beautiful little nothing town, off the beaten path. The waves were gentle and the bodysurfing was great. We grabbed some chelas and cacahuates for the beach and kicked it for a few hours under our slowly deteriorating umbrella. We really needed a little adventure to go on, so this was the perfect place. Loaded with tour buses from Guadalajara, Chacala is growing just a wee bit too fast for it’s own good. At the advice of another ex-pat gringo, we set out heading south of town to find a secluded beach. We stopped on a ridge overlooking the bay, a beautiful arc, with Chacala’s long wide beach in it’s pouch. We found a Guanabana tree, it’s fruit green with fleshy spikes (I took one home, but I was too eager to open the alien casing and jumped the gun before it was ripe). The road we were on had been put in as part of a project to build a luxury housing development and signs were everywhere that this sleepy little beach community is about to change, drastically. When I see that level of infrastructure, it means there is big money behind the project, Marcia joked to me about how 5 years from now we’ll be talking about how Chacala was once this sleepy little town. It was a lucidly ironic moment. We plowed through the country side, occasionally taking a wrong turn and thanking god we had the Pathfinder’s 4×4 to get us out. The soil was rich and red, it reminded me of my trip to Puerto Rico when I was a child, where the soil was blood red, as we drove through the sugarcane countryside.
We ended up at a rock filled beach which I spontaneously named ‘playa pura piedra’ and so we thought we must have taken a wrong turn. Back at the gates of the development, where we had started, an old guy who I assume was the night watchmen told us that we had not taken the right way. After another false start we cut our losses and drove back to town and then to the highway.
El Cruce de Chacala is this little intersection that marks the turn-off from the highway to Chacala. Several fruit stands and a mini-super market mark the turn-off. The fruit vendors sell all kinds of fruit and on the way up here, one particular fruit caught my eye. A large green fruit with nobby, mellow spikes easily the size of a watermelon. We had talked to one of the vendors and promised to return on our way out of town. And so we did. The fruit is called a “Jaka” I may be spelling it wrong. It is the most insane fruit, split open the innards are like a shag carpet and the fruit is hidden inside the strands, cut out one by one, the fruit hides a large nut inside and the flesh tastes like a cross between mango and banana (my two favorite fruits). The texture is like no other fruit I’ve ever tasted. It has a slightly elastic feel to it almost like the snap of a twizzler without the waxy feeling and the smell has lasted in my car for an entire day since.
The day was still young and we were up for adventure, so on the way back to Bucerias, we stopped at three beach towns: Boca de Naranjo, Lo de Marcos and San Pancho. Each town had it’s own flavor and character. Boca’s beach was wide white and flat, set quite far from the town which had little signs of tourism. Lo de Marco had a charming and colorful town square and a nice wide beach loaded with palapa restaurants, definitely a tour bus destination and then San Pancho, another quaint little town with a notable gringo population. Of all the towns we visited that day, San Pancho struck me the most as the one I’d like to end up in someday when Bucerias becomes too busy. The feeling I got as I drove through the streets was one that I felt for the first few months of living in Bucerias, just a small town with a great vibe, perfect for getting lost in.
It was a wonderful getting lost in each of the towns, finding our way through them, getting to know another side of Mexico we don’t see in our day to day lives. I love getting to know Mexico, even in a town similar to mine with a large tourism pull. it’s so beautiful to see the differences and charm in all these little towns, right next to each other or at most just a few miles up the road, but entirely different places with different cultures and customs.
Mexico truly is waiting to be discovered. and I hope it never is.
what’s that sound?
Normally, by this time of year it is insanely hot (or so I’m told). This year is an exception, it has been extremely mild here the past couple of months and it’s already rained lightly twice. The breezes continue to cut the effects of living too close to the equator. Nothing to complain about, but I’ve sensed the temperature rising ever slowly over the past few weeks and the sounds outside my window have been getting increasingly louder at night. It feels as if the winter hibernation is over and all those little sleeping animals have reawakened to live off of the humid water drenched jungle that this place will slowly start to become. Our apartment is slowly becoming inundated with lizards and grasshoppers and other little creatures, I can’t imagine what this place will be like when the rains come.
And outside a symphony roars, just a little louder every night.
a drought of sorts.
it’s literally been ages since I’ve surfed a good wave. ok, maybe a week and a half. the waves just haven’t been rolling in. A nice mellow storm system is blowing through town and with it was supposed to come a nice sized swell but it was a no show. So I’ll have to put the short board away and take the big bwoy long board up to Sayulita for a little shuffling. Good thing about Sayulita, even when there’s no waves, there’s still waves.
mosbef.com
Currently knee deep in designing out a photography site for my sister, using Word Press as a content management system. It’s like creating a weblog and populating it with photos and then taking out 99% of the usability, so the posts which are essentially just photos, are as minimal as possible. I’m not even using pages, so you can’t navigate to photos individually. You view photos by choosing a category such as portraits, hip-hop, travel, fashion etc… and the whole layout is horizontally scrolling, instead of the usual vertical format of most blogs. It’s an insane exercise in getting a piece of software to do things it wasn’t necessarily made to do and stripping things down to it’s barest essentials.
The cool part is that all the info you’d get with a normal blog entry like title, text, excerpt and meta data is all still there but you can’t see it. Google can though. and this is key, the whole site is searchable. totally key. If it works, I’ll probably release it as a Word Press theme.
you can see the work in progress here: qualitypeoples.com/beth
marañon
This is a piece of fruit called the “marañon.” it’s a cute little fruit with the most insane seed growing out of the bottom. very beautiful. Marañons taste sweet but have a cheese quality to them, very similar in taste to the durrien. Update: My good friend Rulex tells me that a Marañon is, believe it or not - a cashew. not the fruit, but the beautiful seed on top. A cashew! as in: I have a cashew tree down the street from me. Cashews are bar none my favorite nut. heaven.
The Crawfords.
Megs, Bart and Henry on their last day, at the fish taco joint, across from the airport. Good to see these guys and can’t wait for them to come back for a two week jaunt in Dec/Jan. Hi Guys!
Roaming Vallarta.
in search of the ever elusive and highly trendy Havaiiana flip-flops. my choice? solid black with green, blue and yellow pinstripes running the length of the sole and Brazilian flag on top.
and the rains came.
Well, not quite yet but…
Last night it rained for the first time since mid-October. Marcia and I came out of our apartment this morning to find our cars splashed with drops of water and the road slightly wet. This is a strange occurrence. The rains usually start about a month from now, according to mom it will start raining on June 20th and she is adamant about this date. They start on any given day and it rains for a few hours every day for three solid months. Torrential rains, three inches in an hour. Insane lightning and thunderstorms. Incredible, beautiful acts of nature. And the show isn’t supposed to happen for another month.
To say that this area needs rain is a complete understatement. The ground is so parched and dry, dust surrounds everything. Foot high mounds of dust collect in the corners of intersections, Driving down the roads, dust clouds follow you where ever you go. Dust colors the air and penetrates everything.
But last night, there was rain. I am happy. and I can’t wait for June 20th.
Word Press Sweetness
So, you’ve noticed things slowing down here in my little corner of heaven? it’s because behind the scenes my little fingers have been hacking away at a new look for this little blog of mine and porting the much beleaguered blogger version to the shiny newness of Word Press. Lot’s of new functionality and content. and best of all, a comment system that doesn’t make you register with the blogger service.
There are still a few wacky things going on around this thing, so I’ll be tweaking the design and code over the next few weeks to get everything to smell all lemony fresh. I hope you like the new look.
on the edge?
and you thought I was living on the edge of nowhere, huh? well, check this out: Starwars Episode III, playing at the Bahia in Puerto Vallarta. tomorrow afternoon. can’t wait.
Update: I saw EPIII last night! woohoo! great film. most definitely miles ahead of the last two. I’d put it up there in the #3 spot, behind “A New Hope” at #2 and “Empire Strikes Back” at #1. I think it was a return to form, for the star wars franchise, minus a few cheesy aspects. The thing that struck me the most was how much the film felt like the originals with updated effects, sounds etc… I’ll probably go see it tonight, again….
Crazy Willie…
… the mexican street dog.
When we were building our vacation house here in Bucerias, there was a dog who slept in a pile of dirt in front. He supposedly belonged to one of the workers. Mangy and unhealthy, this dog was just a day away from dying when my father brought him to the vet and decided to take Willie in. Over the course of a few months, Willie regained his health and came back to Berkeley to live with my parents.
Over the next few years Willie tried to become a house dog, but could never quite get there. My parents tried everything. They even put him on Paxil after he attacked and killed a little baby deer.
Willie eventually returned back to Mexico, when Mom and Dad moved down here full-time. He then began to howl. At first he would howl when no one was home. then he would howl when people were in a different room. On walks, Willie would run away and then howl to be let back in, long after. He would even occasionally follow beach walkers all the way to Nuevo Vallarta and we would get a call from some hotel who had read his dog collar. Willie became friends with our neighbors next door and more and more they began to keep him at night, putting him up on their roof to guard their half-constructed second floor.
Willie would howl and howl, being heard blocks away, night or day. The whole neighborhood knew Willie and everyone wanted to see him go. Even we did. We thought about taking Willie to a cattle farm somewhere up in the mountains. and we were afraid someone might feed him a poisoned steak.
And then one day, I noticed that the howling had stopped and I hadn’t seen Willie for a few days. Marcia remarked that Willie had been gone for a few weeks. and that was the last we heard of him.
Even though I hated his howl and I never quite forgave him for killing the deer, I regret that he is gone and I hope Crazy Willie is well, somewhere safe.
estacionamiento.
i found this gate, on the back to the car from El Abajeño in Tlaquepaque.
Driving Home.
me. having a ‘Paris Hilton’ moment on the drive back from Guadalajara.
on the way home, there were several forest fires buring all along the way from to Bucerias. not a fire truck in sight. wild burning fires.
The Mexican Wedding.
All gussied up for the wedding, Marcia and I ditched early, being the old couple we are. The wedding was not your typical mexican wedding. we tried our best to enjoy ourselves, but as 12 midnight came and went with not a soul under 60 dancing and not a chela (beer) in sight, we snuck off and crashed early.
Technorati Tags: blurry, Guadalajara, Mexico, wedding
Taj at sunset.
Taj watching a dance troup perform a routine to some awful Spice Girls track in the square in Tlaquepaque.
street kids.
We brought Beth and Taj to Tlequepaque to see the stores, mariachis and general all-round goodness that Tlequepaque is. Along the way I chatted with some street kids who were performing dumb tricks for spare change. Slightly sad to see these kids running around in the streets.
This kid told me his parents live in Tijuana for work and he lives with his grandparents. I asked him where they are and he just shrugged and said “Mow-nee” and held out his hand again.
Sylvia does the Tango.
Marcia’s friend Paulina took us to this cute little cafe, on a church square somewhere near downtown Guadalajara. There was some kind of Tango event going on and tons of couples were there dancing the Tango. great little find. reminded me of a piazza in Italy. Sylvia danced the last dance with a cute little old guy that pulled all the ladies and had all the moves. must’ve been the tango teacher.
attack of the chi-wows.
The first night we arrived in Guadalajara, we went to the Zapopan church square, to go to a little bar that Marcia and I had gone to previously. Along the way we ran into the cutest family of chihuahuas (chi-wow-wows),
Guadalajara photos.
Here finally, is a link to a slideshow of some of the photos I took during our trip to Guadalajara with Beth and Taj. more odd memories to follow, randomly choosen, of course. cus I’m too lazy to orchestrate a cohesive thought at the moment. now where is that cerveza…
Surf Report
I often get comments asking me for info on the local surf reports, so I thought I’d add an entry dedicated to surf report information for the Puerto Vallarta / Punta Mita / Sayulita / San Pancho area. Since most people find my blog by google searching, often surf related, here’s a good chunk of info for all you surf rats coming down from the states and canada to enjoy mexico’s various surf spots. enjoy!
Buoyweather.com: my favorite site for swell info uses “virtual buoys” to predict incoming swells using bar graphs for wave height and speed, for a 5 day outlook. The numbers aren’t always correct but when the the little bars go up and into the 8 and 9 foot range, I know it’s gonna be a good day.
The natural geography of the Bahia de Banderas that Puerto Vallarta sits on, breaks the surfing spots into two categories: those that are in the bay facing south and those that are outside of the bay facing north.
Inside the bay, facing south.
Including Veneros, Paredon, Albercas, Punta Burros, La Lancha, Palmitas, El Faro and Cove.
Outside of the bay, facing north
Including Sayulita, San Pancho, Lolas Chacala and a few more
Here’s a good map of the different spots in this area of Mexico.
My other good surf report site is Stormsurf.com, this site is always right on. When you see the height diagram and the little arrows are in the green pointing north, then you know it’s on.
Lastly, I always check the Tide Predictor for this area of Mexico, most spots get bigger as the tide is coming in and can get very weak when the tide is out, although this is not always true.
Good luck in your search for the perfect wave!
The Crawfords.
Megan, Bart and Henry Crawford rolled into town last night. They are staying in Sayulita for the weekend, to scope out houses for a two week trip next Christmas. I picked them up from the airport and we drove up through my little town, Bucerias, making a pit-stop for a mini-tour and the bank and then heading up to Sayulita,
When we got to Sayulita and then finally found the hotel after a few false starts, it turned out that no one was there to greet them. The hotel is called “Bungalows de Los Arbolitos” and I’m sure this doesn’t happen very often, most surely a miscommunication between the owners in the states and the people working at the desk. And so we asked the girl next door at the adjoined little italian deli if she knew anything and she said the girl on duty had gone to vallarta and that she said she’d be back at 8:00pm and it was currently 6:00 so we headed across the square for some bitchin’ fish tacos from my favorite little taco joint, Sayulita Fish Tacos.
We talked and laughed and hung out with Henry, their adorable 6 month old. There was a table of meat-heads next to us, one that was attempting to eat 14 fish tacos and another trying to eat 3 “shoe boxes” (a fish burrito the size of a shoe box - 1 pound each) and 10 of their friends there, to root them on. It was a little annoying. The taco guy broke the record for the most tacos eaten in one sitting and the burrito guy fizzled out at one burrito and a half. Ok, back to the story.
So after dinner and a few beers, we wondered back to the hotel, still no sign of the counter chick. Bart and Megan are a little pissed and understandably so. Megan has her shit together and totally made sure the hotel knew when they would be coming in and that they would have a baby with them.
So to make a long story short, we checked a few more times, went on a few more walks, checked a few other hotels in town with no vacancies or ridiculously high prices and then finally I took them to ‘Casablanca’ this cute little bungalow hotel on the other side of the river and they found a great little room for $110 a night. They settled in while I got some fruit, snacks and beers. We had a beer or two, talked a little and then I headed home.
It was great seeing them. The second people to come and visit me, here in Mexico. We’re supposed to have dinner tonight. I hope they like my little slice of heaven.
dreams continued.
Last night I had a dream that I leased an Audi A4, for two years. And after the first day or two, I started to wonder why I had leased the car and that I didn’t know how much it would cost per month. and why I had leased a german sports car, since the town I live in is either poorly cobblestoned or just dirt. no place for a sports car. mountains of dust everywhere.
why am I remembering my dreams?
Longboard Heaven.
Thursday morning, Marcia’s cousin, Sol came to stay with us for a long weekend. Folks in Mexico do or do not seem to celebrate ‘Cinco de Mayo’ depending on who you talk to, but regardless, all schools get thursday and friday off. Sol is in a contemporary dance school in Guadalajara and decided to come to the beach for the long weekend.
On Thursday afternoon, we went up to Sayulita to catch the beach scene and so Marcia, Beth and Sol could take surf lessons from one of the great surf schools on the beach. Needless to say, the girls were chicken and never got around to taking the lesson, but I did take Beth and Marcia out for my own little surfing lesson (both girls actually stood up on the board and both tired easily). I brought both the boards just in case and it was a good thing because the waves weren’t so good for the shortboard but they were perfect for the longboard.
So I took my longboard out and had an awesome session. The thing is, after using a shortboard for so long, it is infinitely easier to paddle a longboard into and to catch waves. Out in the line-up with the other surfers, it was easier then pie to catch a wave. The shortboard is a great ride, easily maneuverable and fast, but the longboard is still the soul of surfing. I could catch a foot high, mushy-ass wave and still have the best ride of the day. The longboard is all about style and grace and I was practicing both. There’s a ‘trick’ if you can call it that where as you are riding the wave, you move up the board and try to put your feet together and put your toe over the nose of the board, this is called “Toes On The Noes”. And I tried my best to get ten piggies over. I never quite made it, but I did get used to moving up and down the board to control it. My afternoon was all about having fun. And so I spent the afternoon getting back in touch with the soul-boarder in me and I had the most fun I’ve had surfing in quite some time.
Both Beth and Marcia ended up taking a lesson
recent dreams.
I have been having odd dreams. most of the time, I don’t remember my dreams but recently they have become lucid and memorable.
recent dreams:
1. Mom and I are walking along the cobblestoned Vallarta streets, both of us in flip-flops. We take a turn down a less traveled street and there are several foot high scorpions on the other side of the street. As we try to pass they shuffle along towards us, with their claws raised and stingers ready. Mom starts to yell and shriek. Somehow, Mom plants a foot in the middle of the scorpions and they sting and she goes down, they sting me too and I can feel the venom hitting my system, I say “Don’t worry Mom, i’m going to get some milk” and my vision starts to get shaky like a scene from a David Fincher film. and I pass out.
2. I am in a small town, seems like the town that I grew up in, in New York, but much more tropical. There are these gremliny looking creatures killing all of the townspeople. I am constantly running and dodging the creatures in the dream, finding new pathways to take so they can’t catch me. They seem to have a device they throw out into a yard or street, that locates hidden people and kills them in
dozens. I happen upon a group of people living off in a field somewhere and they communicate to me that the creatures are not harmful and that you don’t actually die, but it is some sort of re-birth or re-incarnation process and that life really goes on and once you stop being afraid of them, they really aren’t monsters.
3 and 4. various dreams of spiders and scorpions. mostly while in bed or in the jungle.
These dreams and my recollection of them are quite possibly stress related, which is weird to me, since I’m basically living in paradise. Things at work have been rather hectic lately, so this is probably where the stress is coming from. I’ll have to be more vigilant about finding ways to de-stress the work life. how about less work, but more fully optimized when I am working.
and more surfing, of course.
