To Work
A small boat skims across the water and turns into Chonchos Bay.
The water taxi passes two times a day, but stops only if transportation is needed. Fishing boats regularly pass but don’t pull into the shore. A boat with lumber came twice one day. Men building a deck on one of the palapas unloaded the wood and carried it up the beach.
As the boat nears, it is a young man by himself. He anchors mid-bay, lifts the motor out of the water, lifts his kayak. He paddles in where Chelino meets him on the beach and starts pointing in different directions. The boy has come to work.
What a fun way to come to work.
Squatters
These jungle creatures are proficient squatters. They would make excellent homesteaders, burrowing into land unclaimed. They are excellent at setting up house with the bare minimum.
We are told to check shoes before putting them on as scorpions find their way into the dark little caves of toes.
I foolishly left my pants, soaking wet from the first beach landing on a deck rail. A wicked little yellow spider assuming they had been abandoned, made the pants her home.
Early Morning
Before the sun rises, sitting outdoors, I am cradled in solitude and peace. The children sleep. Tony sleeps. The chatter of the day is still hours away and the singular sounds of nature are magnified. The creaking of deer in the forest. An unrecognized bird call. In the dawn comes clarity of mind.
This morning, the surf laps gently, the pounding of last night worked through like a child’s tantrum. Flocks of pelicans glide over the sea. They are a prehistoric looking species that don’t seem to have gone extinct. Their cousins are dinosaurs, pterodactyls, and wooly mammoths; they are interlopers in the twenty-first century. Imposing, graceful, and I am awed when a long line smoothly glide by with more precision and rhythm than dancers. There are so many in perfect single file that I count. Thirty one!
Sardine Season
The hamlet is what one would expect of a fishing village. A hundred pelicans dive on the shore, make their rest stop on the boats. As we pass on the kayak the smell is horrendous. So many pelicans swooping, diving beak first into the water for something yummy. “Is it always like this?” we ask our waitress, for it is the perfect view to accompany our lunch—the quintessential Mexican fishing village.
“No, not always like this. It’s sardine season.”
And sure enough, a day passes, and the crowded freeway of sardine season has passed.
Father's Day
I often wonder how much I'm like my dad, how many of my likes and dislikes are from him, how many bad habits on him I can blame. I'm half his DNA and lived in his home for 18 years and summers home from college.
We finally found a delicious chili relleno at a restaurant up the river. My first thought was how much my father liked chili rellenos. When I least expect it, Dad shows up in Mexico.
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