This is a conundrum.
At first glance these are footprints on the beach. At a second glance you discover the footprints are not pointing the same direction.
At first thought, I wonder how this happened?
Maybe a man with a peg leg twists his right foot, in the opposite direction, and lights a Cuban cigar as his Labrador Retriever plays in the surf? Maybe a couple with a devilish sense of humor indulge passions, before the sun is truly awake? Maybe Big Foot is on vacation in Mazatlan and is showing Little Foot how to confound humans?
On our last day in Mazatlan, this is fit for a call to Sherlock Holmes.
If anyone can figure it out, it will be him.
One of the first things I come across on this Stone Island beach is a handwritten message scratched in the sand, still hours away from being erased, by the incoming tides.
It brings up an old question – “If no one hears a tree falling in the forest, does it mean the tree didn’t fall?”
It brings up a newer question – “If no one sees our messages, does that mean we weren’t here? ”
Soon enough, this author is going to get all the reviews he or she ever wanted.
My comment, not written in the beach margins, is, ” how can you be sure? ”
They should have left their phone number.
Writing always raises more questions than it buries.
As our tour boat moves slowly through the water, paralleling Stone Island, we see mangroves form a wall to our east. We leave the marina and head north past large shrimp boats, tuna ships with miles of net piled on their decks, one of the largest fish canneries in Mexico, the Pacifico beer bottling plant, some ship repair yards and ocean going vessels in various shades of rust.
Rounding the northern tip of the island, we head now, towards the south, on the opposite side of the island from where we began. You can look further south and see breaking waves as waters of the Pacific meet waters of this estuary fed by rivers. Mangroves grow where salt water and fresh water meet and they are crucial for this aquatic environment.
While we chug along, a pelican flies down to the deck at the bow of our boat and looks at Polo, our guide.
Pelicans are odd looking birds with huge beaks, beaded eyes and bald heads, huge jointed wings. This visitor’s webbed feet splay out on the deck and he isn’t going anywhere.
Polo reaches for his microphone and tells us a story.
“This is my friend Juanito,” he begins. “He comes and joins us on most of our trips. I will give him fish later for a reward …”
“Some years back,” Polo continues, “we found this pelican who was covered with oil and couldn’t fly. So we wrapped him in a coat and took him home and my family cleaned him up and fed him till he could fly again. We had him at home a year before we brought him back here and let him go. His home is over there …”
Polo gestures at the mangroves.
“He joined us on a tour one day and now he always comes to see us. He is a very smart bird. When I feed him he knows which fish to eat and which fish to leave alone.”
After telling us about the value of mangroves to the ecosystem, and stressing the importance of fishing to the local economy, Polo feeds Juanito his first treat.
For a bunch of tourists, on vacation, Juanito is a high point.
It isn’t every day you are visited by a Pelican and get to watch him grab a fish in his beak, wiggle his long neck to get the fish down to his stomach, then look back at you with contentment and anticipation, as his friend, Polo, reaches into a white five gallon paint bucket for yet another snack.
Juanito takes this fish gently from Polo’s hand, and swallows.
He has become, and he knows it too, our official trip mascot.
At dusk, clouds congregate on the horizon and cars exit Highway 303 at Bell Rd. to go to Surprise, Arizona.
It is quitting time for those who still have a job to go too.
In Surprise, brother Alan and I are staying at the Happy Trails Resort but it could just as well be Tumbleweed Acres, the Paradise River Resort, the Leaping Lizard RV Park, or the Frontier Horizons. There are plenty of places in Surprise for people to pull RV’s, buy homes to fit their budgets, or stay in planned parks with clubhouses, libraries, ballrooms, swimming pools and saunas. In the deserts of Arizona there are plenty of developer escapades to worry about ,and, according to a yesterday’s local news article, plenty of land fraud cases to keep a team of corporate lawyers busy.
On the off ramp at Bell Road, we are just another car in line, waiting to make a left, continue down Bell Rd till we see our Happy Trails Resort, stop at a security gate and get waved through by a security guard, a middle aged park tenant making extra money to pay his monthly space rent.
Sunset is on the way, and,as it spreads, the sky becomes streaks of pink with textures reminding me of Van Gogh;s ” Starry Night. “.
The End of the World has been on my mind lately.
There are enough bad toys around the world to exterminate us all.
Staying off the internet and staying uninformed is a smart thing to do.
When Rome burns, you want to be out of town.
There is, at some point, a line whereby good taste moves into bad.
There are value meters operating in everyone’s head at any given time with rating needles moving from one to ten, good to bad, up or down simultaneously within many categories. The Happy Trails Resort is above 5 but less than 10 on most of my scales.
Yard decorations at Happy Trails, however, score ten and a half..
There are carved wooden bears that welcome you with open arms. There are pink flamingos that have eschewed the Florida Everglades for dry desert vistas. There are little plastic ducks circling the inside of birdbaths. There is Golf Ball Man waiting for his next shot, cow skulls painted like a woman’s nails, plastic flower gardens, wooden birds whose tails rotate as wind direction changes. Makeshift clotheslines reach across carports and golf carts are pulled into driveways as the preferred mode of transportation. Such devil may care decorating brings the best and worst from Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Oregon, Washington, California.
Saquaro cactus stand tall and in the evenings look like silent sentinels waiting for an Indian attack. There are stories from residents of bobcat sightings and unwary house cats being carried off in the clamped jaws of coyotes, never to be seen again.
Ages here hover around 70 and real estate signs pepper each street.
Few snowbirds stay through the summer with heat over a hundred and ten degrees. Those that do come out only in early morning or late evening. The rest of the day they spend checking stock portfolios, calling kids and grand kids, and fixing light meals in microwave ovens.
When you get old you don’t want to move randomly or carelessly.
You want to hunker down in a gated community and keep a loaded pistol on your nightstand.
I-10 takes you to Los Angeles if you stay on it all the way.
Out of Wilcox, Arizona the Interstate takes you along a steadily winding uphill road that goes from long flat expanses to foothills and into rugged mountains. Several miles before you get to Texas Canyon, a collection of rock formations that look like a group of dinosaur’s ridged backs, you come to a ghost town called Stein’s. There is a faded billboard promoting the place that has survived highway beautification and Ladybird Johnson.
Usually Stein’s has just been a glance to my right and is passed by. There is nothing here but old wood cabins, rusted machines, cactus, barbed wire fences and trailers for people who want to live away from other people because it is easier that way.
I drive over an overpass, follow a gravel road that ends at a closed chain link gate. There is a sign with red lettering that says the place is closed and two men inside the fence today are burning weeds and trying to get the best of their rakes and shovels.
“You closed?”
“They are,” one says, suspicious of my intentions.
“Good place for a movie shoot.”
“They did a few here,” comes a grunt, “but the highway noise makes it hard. Kills the sound man. ”
“Is the Museum open?”
“No, the owner’s husband was murdered here and it has been closed four years. She doesn’t know what she is going to do. ”
When a place has a population of two and one gets murdered you have devastation.
My love affair with Stein’s ends as quick as it began and I pull back out on the Interstate with relief, glad to leave the two prisoners to their work detail.
Stein’s is now in my rear view mirror and its history is sad.
It is just another comma in a long winded Faulkner novel where people are born, live, and die while moss grows thick in the trees and the difference between humans and animals is only razor thin.
Golf and sunshine walk hand in hand in Arizona in 2015 like a retired couple on a perpetual honeymoon.
The Happy Trails RV Resort surrounds a golf course and its golf holes wind through the development like a snake doing a break dance. The greens are good but fairways need attention with new owners cutting doglegs to trim overhead and maximize profit.
Walking down streets named Trigger, Spur, Lariat, there are yard decorations in abundance.
In a golfing area, one is not surprised to find Golf Ball Man, a curious combination of super sized golf ball cells held together with wire skin and topped off with a driver, golf cap, sunglasses, and a determined look.
He shoots under par, sinks thirty foot down hill putts, has no trouble with sand shots, drives like a twisting desert dervish. If you ask him, he will tell you you have to give him five shots a nine plus one mulligan an eighteen. He can up the bet on the eighteenth hole if he chooses, and you can’t tee up your ball in the fairway.
Roy Rogers and Dale Evans are patron saints of this place but Golf Ball Man says his prayers in the pews.
At night I hear golf ball man practicing his putting, and, whistling, ” When the Saints, Go Marching in….. ”
According to Ruth, we are in a Mob Bar.
Everyone in the place is well dressed and it is questionable whether I should be let inside with Levis, a nice dress shirt, hiking shoes and uncombed hair.
South Florida is a place with comfortable weather this time of year and an inclination towards leisure and decadence. There are banks, mortgage companies, pawn shops, tattoo parlors, restaurants and hotels, strip clubs, car dealerships, lawyers and anything else you might want or need to keep your equilibrium.
Once you drive away from the Fort Lauderdale International airport you are welcomed by wide streets, manicured lawns, palm trees and canals, million dollar yachts, almost cloudless night skies and a full moon this evening. The parking lot of Ruth’s favorite lunch place is full and Coral Springs is a long way from Miami Beach, West Palm Beach, or any beach.
On Wednesdays and Thursdays, Travelino’s features live music or live comedy. Tonight, on a Monday, they don’t have a dinner that fits so our fall back choice is chocolate mousse.
When served, the dessert reminds me of Roman orgies.
The waiters in this club wear white shirts, black slacks and black ties. The bartender shows us a new tattoo on her left wrist. When tattoos appear on middle aged bodies one has to wonder how much longer our Republic is going to survive?
On second thought, maybe it was Al Capone I saw in the washroom talking to his accountant, smoking a Cuban cigar.
I didn’t see any bodies on the washroom floor with bullet holes in their forehead, but the night is still young.
While I enjoy mousse, my ears are cocked, listening for slamming car doors in the parking lot and someone saying the name , ” Vinnie. ”
Ruth brings her mom here for lunch, so it can’t be all that dangerous.
In fact, Ruth and I decide, after consideration, that this is the kind of place Al Capone would bring his own mom.
She would probably not have tattoos.
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.
Checklist traveling has advantages.
You go to guidebooks, visit sites and attractions, book tours with an English speaking guide, get familiar with places deemed newsworthy by those in the know. You see five to seven points of interest, stop and walk, listen to an oral history given by your guide, get picked up at your hotel and dropped off. You don’t worry about driving, parking, fees. Often, you find places you want to return to on your own time.
One of the stops on this city tour is the Costa Rican National Theater that was built by coffee growers in Costa Rica in the 1800’s to showcase their progressive country. Coffee has been the heart of this economy,forever, but it now shares importance with tech, banking and tourism. It takes more cards than one to make a good poker hand and most successful people and countries have more than one revenue stream.
An expedition moment that stands out is a young man holding an umbrella over his significant other’s head while she checks her cell phone in the rain.
Which sex is boss is a question with plenty of wiggle .
Looking back, as we turn a corner and head for the next tour attraction,I see the young man still holding her umbrella, patiently, gently.
Men talk to their stockbrokers.
Women talk to their hairdressers.
Patience is a good quality to have when there are women in your life.
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