Our original trip concept was to take RVs to Mexico, stay on the beach a month, drink beer, and check out bikinis.
Our original destination was to be San Carlos, Mexico – up the coast north from Mazatlan. There was a RV park already picked out. But things change, all the time and quickly, so that trip idea turned and became a different animal.
Because diesel fuel is of a lower grade in Mexico, Alan didn’t want to drive his RV to San Carlos. By the time we three figured the cost of fuel, insurance, space rent ,it was going to be cheaper to take a traditional vacation to a hotel with hot water and maid service so we dropped our idea of a RV caravan.
On a morning walk, Alan and I discover a RV park in Mazatlan where we all might have stayed if we had brought our RV’s. It is on the beach, in the middle of the Zona Dorado, and affordable. Seeing these big rigs pulled in between palm trees on a dirt lot and old guys in shorts riding rusting bicycles to the front doors of their luxurious motor homes, brings a fuzziness to my heart. The snowbirds carry English newspapers in little wire bicycle baskets and will spend this afternoon working on a crossword puzzle because it is too hot to go fishing.
Jose, the park’s maintenance man, waves when we knock on the closed office door and we talk with him in broken Spanish, enough to understand that it costs five hundred dollars a month to stay here and you pay for your electric. This park is right on the beach and some patrons come down for months. The office is closed but this park doesn’t need much management with these old guys taking care of most nuisances themselves.
In a place like this you want to live quiet, economical, and simple. You want to have a few friends you can count on and buy lots of shrimp on the beach from fishermen who just come in. A couple of beers in the evening to calm the mind are good, and reading ” Old Man and the Sea ” puts your mind in the right frame.
Here, in Mazatlan, we all have time to savor our time.
Hotels and restaurants dot both sides of the street that takes you from the Mazatlan historical center to the marina at the north end of town. If each hotel was represented on a map with a red pin, and each restaurant a blue pin, you would have a long
row of pins. You could climb up on the head of one pin and walk all the way to the marina without ever touching the road.
A half block down the calle, in front of the Hotel Playa ,is a colorful eatery that calls itself the Gringo Lingo
A kid in front of the eatery, holds a menu, stands on the sidewalk and talks us inside for a meal and a Pacifico beer – one of Mazatlan’s gifts to the world. There is world class fishing in these waters that drew Hollywood stars in the 50’s, taking time off from the rigors of stardom and Los Angeles. You see photos of John Wayne and Robert Mitchem in travel brochures in local shops and huge marlin dangling from the end of ominous hooks connected to dock scales.
This evening the three of us are enticed into the Gringo Lingo complete with bright primary school colors, hanging potted plants, and an extensive menu of Mexican and American favorites. There is only a handful of patrons when we enter and only a few come after we find a table. It is early in the evening and people are still recovering from sunburn and too many afternoon margaritas.
This evening we try tortilla soup and chicken wings. Ordering food is a tricky business in Mexico even though menus show pictures and have food descriptions written in English as well as Spanish.
Dining tonight in the ” Golden Zone, ” we eat what tastes good to us and look for movie stars.
Mazatlan, in it’s day, was where gringos went to speak their lingo to the ocean sunsets.
Mazatlan, today, has lost some of it’s charm. Now, it feels like a big marlin that has hung a bit too long from a big hook on the pier.
If places could just remain the way they used to be,mostly natural and undiscovered, we travelers would all be the better for it.
While the places I visit are new to me, there is no question that I have been preceded where I go by many.
If going someplace no one has been was my goal, I would never get out of my house.
In the morning, before ten, the beaches are empty except for romantics, beachcombers, and elderly walking their dogs.
Around this place, people stay up late, dance into the late hours, have a few too many drinks, keep everyone at the hotel awake as they stumble down hallways with all too many doors looking the same.
The Malecon is a wide sidewalk that runs from Valentino’s to the Centro of Mazatlan. It parallels the beach and gives ample room for bicycles, walkers, joggers, hand holders, pet walkers, photographers, street hustlers, tourists and locals. The thoroughfare is level, the potholes far and few between, and, if you wish, you can take concrete steps down to the beach and feel sand between your toes. It reminds me of the Rambla in Montevideo though the sunlight in Mazatlan is more intense than sunlight in Montevideo.
At breakfast, our conversation is about re-locating to Mexico from America, and Americans.
“You don’t want to be around Americans,” Dave insists.
What he says is understandable, but we are Americans. It sticks on us like a glove. You can change your clothes, work on your accent, hang out with the locals, smoke non filter cigarettes and eat shrimp till your eyes bulge,but you will always be a gringo.
You can take Americans out of their country but you can’t take America out of American’s.
Being an American doesn’t prohibit you from enjoying Mazatlan for as long as you want to stay. As long as you are spending green dollars, there is tolerance here for you.
People here might not like Americans, but they love our American money.
The Mazatlan geography is flatand vegetation hugs the ground. The predominant building material in town is cement and tile is used prolifically because it is easy to wash, mop, clean, and maintain.
Around us this afternoon are T-shirts aplenty in storefronts, caps and sunblock, numerous watering holes for an ever thirsty clientele. Street vendors get ready for evening when people come out to play and this well known city has miles of beach for para sailing, kayaking, swimming, body surfing and building sand castles. There are places here you can eat famous Mazatlan shrimp or Carne Asada with jalapenos and onions.
Mexico remains Mexico – loud, bold, in your face. After your first day you realize that it is you who must adjust, slow down, turn over, and not be in a hurry. There is plenty of time to do what you think needs to be done, but you first need to think about whether it really does need to be done. This is a place that doesn’t always reward the ambitious.
With the sound of waves ever present, this afternoon is spread out like a beach towel waiting for a warm body.
The Seashell Museum offers shells from around the world.
A group of girls practice volleyball kills across from a beach bar.
Senor Frog greets guests for casual shopping and a local eatery entices with fake margaritas displayed on a table on a sidewalk in front of a bar.
A pit bull looks down on his street from an upstairs window and barks at everyone while thirsty bikers sip whiskey and talk about Harley’s.
We have all landed.
Mexico will have its way with all of us.
Interstate 10 from Surprise to the Phoenix airport is slowed to six miles per hour at seven in the morning.
Our clock is ticking and our plane departure time is absolute.
Alan and I exit the freeway and head south to Buckhorn Avenue at 51st street, then east towards the airport. With detours, and uncertainty, we end at the airport and find the Terminal 4 parking garage, slide into a small space for my compact car that I drove to Happy Trails from Albuquerque, and get ourselves to the American Airlines check in desk. We meet Dave, who drove in from Denver, in the Phoenix airport, and board together a flight to Mazatlan, Mexico.
On the airplane, all the way to Mexico, there is the back of a head looking at me. I keep trying to visualize it with eyes, a nose, a mouth, a personality. But, it is just a thatch of graying hair holding up a set of earphones. To my left is a porthole window whited out by the sun.
Alan tries to catch up on sleep in the window seat. Dave is seated in the front of the plane. He hates flying and had to bring oxygen because of COPD.
After two hours we three land in Mexico and have to endure still another security screening.
This is a price you pay for being warm when back home people are wearing heavy jackets and shoveling snow.
Being deemed no security threat, we catch a cab to our hotel, change into shorts, and watch palm trees sway in the breeze above a cool blue swimming pool as babes turn into bronze statues.
Up to now we have just been talking Mexico. Now, we are doing Mexico.
Another foreign country is getting into Scotttreks, this time with company
Towards the end of any visit, many travelers sort through high points, low points, things that didn’t work out, things that went well.
If you keep a journal, write a blog, take photos, or go with someone, you have a way to remember what you saw,did, thought during a domestic or international sojourn. Traveling solo is tricky because you get off the beaten track, waste time and energy, spend needlessly, don’t see or do things you should. You miss the pleasure of other’s company and chances to share memorable experiences.
This morning, on a wall in a local San Jose coffee shop, just under the cash register, is comic strip wallpaper. The wallpaper is a series of square boxes with pictures and words in each square. This comic strip features a hard boiled detective narrative and has gangsters shooting each other when words fail to change behavior. Each little square, on the wall, advances the story towards a dramatic end.
Scotttreks tells its quiet stories the same way as this comic strip, one post at a time, one square at a time, a hundred to three hundred words maximum,building a little encapsulation of each travel locale, it’s people. places, things and happenings.
When I look back at the places I go and things I do, they don’t always remember the same.
My memories, it is clear, don’t always change in the same direction as my mind wanders.
Costa Rica is far from a prosaic gangster story.
This country is much more a nature poem.
In walks, I see other places I might like to stay in San Jose, Costa Rica.
This Inn has been passed before and always merits a second glance.
From the outside, it appears Hemingway really might have resided in one of the upstairs rooms and composed at a little desk with an old typewriter and pages of manuscripts edited and reworked with handwritten notes in the margins. From the outside, I have always thought this place would be expensive but a yard sign says rooms start at forty dollars a night. As much as I like the Hotel Aranjuez, this little Inn, even by peeking through the front door at a winding stairway and a front desk with photos and paintings on the wall behind it, seems grand.
The Hemingway Inn requires research, so, on line, back at the Hotel Aranjuez, I do my study..
Reviews of the Hemingway Inn go from enthusiastic, to lukewarm, to cold. You always find that, but somewhere in the middle you find that this Inn is clean, old, the staff is helpful and accommodating, the decor is quirky and the location is close to things to see and do in an older part of San Jose , rough around the edges.
Reading reviews, its owner is mentioned as a writer and a room inside is named after Hemingway.
Some night, when I lodge here, I can sit at the bar late and listen to stories of other travelers, then go upstairs to bed and wake in the morning to the sounds of sparrows and roosting birds in the trees outside my window.
If Hemingway didn’t stay here, he should have.
Tourist season is blooming and booming.
Tour companies pack avid nature lovers into Costa Rica’s National Parks, visit rain forests, hike deep into volcanic arenas, provide vivid sights for photographers, bird watchers and naturalists. You can do zip lines, ride up and down aerial trams, trek up steep mountainsides, or river run to your heart’s content in a natural paradise.
Yet, there is trouble in paradise too.
This morning, early, my bed moves unexpectedly. .
Earthquakes also visit Costa Rica throughout the year.
Some call Costa Rica a Garden of Eden.
When my room shakes, I don’t think about Paradise.
I think about finding the closest exit.
This rainbow is out early.
It is Sunday and two tourists with big cameras are walking in the middle of the street ahead of me with lens in the shooting position, talking French.
This rainbow is beginning to lose its colors but you can still see its bands; yellow, blue, green and pink semicircles. It is difficult to see the precise end of the legs of the rainbow’s arc with the city in the way. If you were a cowboy you would just lasso the rainbow, climb up,ride, and then slip off with a whoopee.
This rainbow is gone in a half hour, and a little man in a green suit and bowler cap, ahead of me, carries a bag of money in each little hand.
I hear him laughing as he clicks his heels down the street looking to buy a round of drinks for everybody at his favorite pub.
The Costa Rican National Museum is not world winning architecture. It is a renovated Spanish fort, and, for that reason, has little frills. Inside you see thick walls, peer through lookout holes in towers, pass through heavy wooden doors with huge iron hinges and visualize old days of conquest.
From our guide, we learn that Spanish dominance in Costa Rica was limited because there wasn’t much gold. The gold that did exist was placer gold from rivers and streams, not the huge deposits mined in Peru or Mexico. There was no Inquisition here and the Costa Rica fight for independence was short.
Costa Rican life revolves around weather, nature, rain forests, co-operation, community, family. There is no standing army and the police force doesn’t disappear people.There are over a million students in the free University system, the population is literate,their government provides a safety blanket.
One of the exhibits in the fort is an old Spanish jail, where misfits and law breakers, political prisoners, and trouble makers were confined. When you want to hurt someone, you take away freedom of movement, put them in a non-stimulating environment, control the food they eat, when they sleep, who they see.
You are always going to need jails but graffiti on the cell walls say you won’t ever be able to shut people up by locking them up.
Even Ancient Rome, powerhouse of the ancient world, couldn’t stop dirty jokes and rude pictures scratched on public bathroom stalls.
Hearing just what we want is not always what we need.
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