There are several marinas in Mazatlan.
The northern marina tends towards pleasure while the southern marina gravitates towards work.
This Sunday the only event that draws skippers off their boats are NFL playoffs on high def TVs in bars and restaurants close to the water.There are security gates at each boat ramp that lead down to slips where boats small and large are tethered. On Sunday, yacht owners aren’t busy. Some of the sailing craft here, be they sailboats or yachts, cost in the hundreds of thousands.
On a window near the bar where Alan, Dave and I have lunch, there are For Sale notes for more modest craft. Someone looking for a cheap place in Mazatlan can buy a 30 foot Bayliner with a diesel engine for eight thousand and park in a slip for twenty four cents a foot per day year round. You have it all – security, socializing, proximity, alcohol, sun, and surf.
All in all, this marina leaves the impression that some people have too much money and it needs to be distributed. That thinking, though, needs to be scuttled.
It is bad policy to worry too much about what other people have, and how they got it.
Only politicians keep sipping from this straw.
Back in the 1950’s, after WW2, most people headed home to raise families.
Men were tired of shooting bullets and women were tired of making them. Instead of killing humanity the focus became re-populating humanity. An era of big bands was coming to a halt and an age of rock and roll, beat poetry, and abstract expressionist art was coming into its own. Jazz, an American art form, was in ascendance and its emphasis on rhythm, dissonance and drugs were a premonition of things to come.
Jack Kerouac, one of the beat generation’s shining stars, made a trip down to Mazatlan in the 50’s in an old bus, camped, and immortalized this place as one stop in his epic rollicking novel “On the Road.”
On a wall, by The Shrimp Bucket, is a plaque placed by the Mazatlan Historical Society to commemorate the exact point in place and time where the bard stopped roaming, drank beer, hung out with the locals, and dreamed of the proletariat overcoming. He looked for pleasure and put his stories down in long winding sentences where he only stopped writing to take a breath. His novel was new for its day but old in concept. He was the hero of his own epic Homeric poem. He was a tumbleweed travelling to new ports with his only home the inside of his bus or a bedroll spread out in some flophouse. His friends were fragile poets traumatized by war, big business, and moral restrictions.
Sitting in The Shrimp Bucket, you can look at a little hill that must have made Jack nostalgic for San Francisco. Even if you can’t agree with Kerouac’s self destroying lifestyle, you can understand why he was here, by the water, drinking beer with limes, almost naked bodies dancing in the surf and fishermen spinning stories of great marlin battles.
Kerouac would have turned sentimental at the marlin story telling but Hemingway, if here, would have relished each twist of the hooks.
Kerouac was beautiful in his willingness to edit nothing.
.Hemingway was beautiful in his willingness to cut everything to its heart.
They are both masters of prose storytelling.
I would have loved to be drinking at the next table to them, at the Shrimp Bucket on any starry Mexican night,listening to them talk poetry.
Down near the radio towers, at the south end of the Malecon, is an eatery called the Shrimp Bucket.
It is right on the road and if you stick your arm out from a table closest to the rail that separates you from the road, a car will take your arm off your shoulder.
From our table Alan, Dave and I can see the Malecon, the beach, a rock hill where San Francisco type homes rise to give the grandest view for miles. After an appropriately long wait in a place where time itself is on a holiday, a waiter brings us a menu that is the same as it was in the 1950’s. There is, after all, no reason to change your Menu when everything on it is something someone once paid money for.
The marlin stew catches my eye.
After a large hotel breakfast, a bowl of stew is enough for lunch and if it is good for hangovers it will also be good for a travelers malaise that strikes at some point in every trip where sun, surf, new surroundings, different language, lack of sleep begin to take a toll.
Marlin stew is pungent and Mexican. It is packed with peas, carrots, onions, cabbage, green olives, and small reddish bits of marlin. The marlin has a distinct flavor and its taste is softened by queso piled on top of the soup and crackers broken and dumped in the bowl like you did when you were a kid. The stew is hot and spicy and comes with a cold local Pacifico beer.
After I finish lunch I want to cross the road, descend concrete stairs to the beach, lie down on a bench under a thatched shelter, take a long siesta, and dream of long winding Kerouac sentences that get lost in their own waves.
Us English majors have a thing for well turned sentences, short or long.
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.
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.
Outside the Happy Trails Resort, to the southwest, is a nature preserve named the White Tank Mountains.
Whereas Surprise is a continuation of development, an encroachment upon the desert, the White Tank Mountains are resolutely clinging to nature. Within fifteen miles of Surprise, this preserve takes you into wilderness with some modern conveniences. There are picnic areas, a winding loop road that returns you to the visitor center, RV spaces for rent, clean bathrooms. Some of the trails are okay for patrons in wheelchairs or using canes, and on other trails you see mountain bikes, horseback riding, and hikers.
Leaving the visitor center and driving into the park, there is a pull off place for active souls who like to run, ride bikes, horseback, train for athletic events. This time of morning, on a weekday, there are only two cars in the parking lot when brother Alan and I pull in.
Walking the trail, it isn’t hard to imagine grizzled prospectors leading a donkey deep into the mountains looking for precious metals. It isn’t hard to imagine ranchers chasing down cattle or Indians fighting troops stationed at old time forts.
There are still places you can disappear in Arizona.
Staying on Pathways has always been difficult for me, but I am not the only one who has trouble walking a straight line.
Brothers keep us grounded by knowing who we used to be.
Fort Lauderdale is to Pompano Beach as Cadillac is to Ford.
Fort Lauderdale has location, money, reputation, retirees. The boulevards are a little bigger, the canals a little deeper, the yachts a little bigger, the bling a little brighter, the stories much much more full of deception.
Pompano Beach seems more comfortable, more downscale, more livable. Pompano Beach seems like an old pair of beach shoes that fit your feet perfect, don’t care if sand gets on them, and fit on the floor of your car like they were made to be there.
At Sand Harbor there is an ancient hotel that retains the charm of the fifties, a bar and restaurant that serves great fish sandwiches, plus a nice view of the Intra-coastal Waterway.
After lunch Ruth and I walk the beach and it reminds me why half the east coast moved to Florida and stayed. Ruth moved her 90 year old mom down to Florida from New York into a second floor condo above her.
It is a slightly cool afternoon and at a little snack bar on the beach folks are gathering to chat, have coffee, eat, lounge under palm trees and be glad they don’t have to work at jobs they did ten years longer than they should because their kids were in college.
Pompano Beach, this afternoon, is one of those old fashioned postcard shots that tells everyone you are in Florida and having a great time, and eat your heart out.
The bond between mothers and daughters is sometimes tenuous, but, more often, tough and durable.
Love and duty are inextricably linked.
Tomorrow, I fly back to the desert.
You stay in Florida too long, you start to get webbed feet.
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.
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.
This little gift shop is not far from the Holiday Inn in Old San Jose, a hop skip and jump from the Municipal Square, a stone’s throw from the Gold and Jade Museo’s, several blocks from casinos.
Browsing, I come across an authentic bow with arrows with hard wood points and bird feather quills for stability and distance. Woven baskets from Panama and crazy masks peer down upon me as I shop the shop.There are imitations of pre-Colombian pottery on the higher shelves, safe from little hands, and carvings of birds and animals made from the Tigua nut.
I buy the bow and arrows and make arrangements to have them shipped home, paid for with my credit card. It is rather amazing that someone in a foreign country would give credit to someone they just met and will most likely never meet again. Combining trust with money has always been a touchy job..
How the hell did those ancient hunters hit running animals in rough terrain, in questionable weather, with these questionable weapons?
Their dreams were lots deeper than mine, all about life, death, spirits and Gods.
I’m going to hang the bow and arrows on one of my living room walls to remind me how easy I have it.
There are some days I can’t even hit the ground with my hat.
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