These guys and girls aren’t going hungry.
They are fed in the morning and in the afternoon with snacks in between meals to help them put on weight. They will eat as much as you give them and they always behave as if they are starving.
Alma washes out their cages several times a day and they get hosed down with well water to cool them down. Pigs are fair skinned and mosquitoes bite them awful so a little fire burns in front of their roofed, cinder block pens, the smoke chasing mosquito’s away.
When you come up to their cells the big ones stand up on their back feet,put their front feet on the top of the cinder block wall, stick their snouts towards you and oink. You have to be careful touching them because they can bite.
After pigs eat, they sleep for hours, and grow like babies, fed with dry food scientifically formulated for fast growth, lean meat, tasty meat.
When they get 90 kilos they will go to the market, but not to shop.
Not knowing your fate is a good thing.
If they knew they were going to become barbecue ribs, they would lose their appetites.
Pigs are popular on Marinduque.
They are particularly popular for large family get together’s and celebrations. Like Ecuadorians and Mexicans, Philipino’s like pork and many households have a pig or two staked out in back yard mud holes. On this day, the man who makes his living cooking pigs over a fire, on a spit, comes to get one for a family wedding. After looking in Alma’s pens, he chooses the right sized pig for the celebration, then lifts it out of it’s cage.
The pig squeals and hollers but is no match for this big man.
The pig man grabs one pig foot and ties it with a piece of line, then grabs the other three feet and wraps all four together. Finished, he lifts the squirming squealing pig and carries it to his tricycle. Tomorrow, this pig will be lunch. After a life of indolence, this well fed boy only has a few hours to live and he hasn’t even had a fair trial.
Pigs get slaughtered.
The most important thing to remember is not to name them, and not to get attached. It is hard to love your pork chop when it used to be your pet.
Rice is a staple.
The rice plant grows about a foot high and then men with machetes separate the part of the plant with rice grains from the rest of it. The rice grains are shaken from the leaves, gathered, then laid out in the sun on mats to dry in the intense sun, turned with a rake to bake evenly.
When dry, the rice grains are loaded into bags and taken to a machine that separates the husk from the rice inside each grain.
Rice production is labor intensive and men standing in water bend over all day wearing broad hats and long sleeved shirts to bring it out of the fields.
Rice is served here three times a day with vegetables, chicken, fish, pork, and, occasionally- beef. What is not eaten is dished into food bowls for dogs and cats,and pigs.
Coconut trees are also a staple.
Coconut shells are burnt in little fires near houses so the smoke keeps mosquitoes under control. Coconut water is prized in European and American health food stores. Coconut is used to make culinary masterpieces and give texture and color to cosmetics. The leaves from coconut trees make roofs that keep heads dry and kids sleep in bunk beds made from the trunks of coconut trees.
Rice and coconuts leave their fingerprints on everyone here.
Across the road from the Hemingway Romantic Eco-Cottages is an open air bar with picnic tables covered by Mexican tablecloths, salt and pepper shakers made with small Corona bottles, pithy signs and a cooking area where a chef makes tacos, a specialty of the house.
This VW bus, from the 60’s, has been painted, gutted, and parked in a visible location. Inside it, our waiter writes down our order, sits a moment on a small wooden bench, stands, adjusts his glasses, and, in due time, hustles his ticket over to the chef who is cleaning his grill.
This VW bus was driven down here in the 60’s and never made it home.
There are still people living in Tulum who came down, lost their passport, credit card, money and hangups, and stayed to the drum roll of the waves.
Fish, beef, chicken and pork are the four tacos featured tonight.
Joan has one of each and I have the rest.
Coming to Tulum was her idea, and it is a good one.
I call this jaunt a sparkling interlude moving to the bridge in a typical jazz standard with an AABA form.
If you have time to order mid day ice cream in a different country, served by staff who don’t know your language, with a white cloth napkin and clean silverware,you don’t need to worry about price or how quick to eat it.
This is a full three scoops of coffee ice cream plus strawberries with some nutty granola sprinkled around the base of the mountain for flavor and texture.
The ice cream in the bowl reminds me of a University of New Mexico professor in the English department who used to wear a red bow tie to class and extol the virtues of James Joyce and ” Ulysses. ”
Despite spending a semester in the novel, it would be difficult to sum it up in a neat little package. It was one hell of a book with a focus on little things, like taking a magnifying glass and looking at the weave of a handmade quilt that someone was quilting as you read.
In the hot summertime, the Professor in this bowl would become mud quickly.
Now, in February, he maintains his profile and will always be remembered as a crusty bookworm who should have been dusting library shelves instead of lecturing students in neat rows.
Ice cream is a small pleasure but a pleasure to be savored.
Joan and I share till nothing is left in the bowl.
Women and desserts seem to go together.
At sundown, people in Tulum begin to congregate.
From their tables in the dining area at Ahau Tulum, customers and friends watch the sun go down as the Caribbean Sea vanishes into dark. As sunlight dims, people leave the beach, wash away sand and suntan lotion,put on sexy night clothes and sit down to dinner and a few drinks. There are families here, romantic couples, locals who sit at their favorite tables, waiters taking orders and hustling drinks. Most guests are fleeing winter in Europe, United States and Canada. Table candles are made from Corona bottles and waiters bring little flashlights out of their shirt pockets to help guests read the menu as the sun hits the water.
As a visitor to Tulum, I am enjoying living the life of the rich and famous, as I imagine they live.
In reality, as nice as this hotel and restaurant is, it is just another budget eatery for people, like myself, of modest means.
Most of us can’t dream as big as our modern uncrowned royalty and business billionaires live.
Some men and women,these days, not all of them politicians, live a lifestyle that would make Caesar blush.
At dinnertime, a pelican begins his dive.
He circles his target, turns himself into a projectile by tucking his wings to his body,and disappears head first into the surf. When he comes back to the water’s surface, he shakes his wings and recomposes, a fish struggling in his enormous beak.
Not long after, a fisherman wades into the pelican’s same fishing hole, net in hand, and the pelican takes off like a seaplane from an Alaskan lake.
The fisherman moves slowly, studies the waves, the light, the wind.
Positioning himself, he casts his handheld net with both hands,lets his net fall to the bottom, then draws it back towards him with a rope line, hand over hand. When he drags his net onto the beach it holds silvery fish twisting in the bright sunlight.
He and his friend transfer fish from the net into a plastic bag, then lift up and climb back on their bicycles and pedal home, the net draped over a bike’s handle bars to drip dry.
If you live simply, how much of the day needs to be used up working?
What is so important to us that we work sixty hours a week?
There is color here.
The beach is a blinding white slightly curving belt of sand holding the blue sea and green jungle loosely around the waist. The sky is a blue un-fenced playground for white soft clouds sailing like yachts. Sunlight is intense and filters through the rustling leaves of a green canopy. Shops, bars and restaurants wear colorful pinks,turquoise, yellow, magenta, red. Bright birds pause on dark brown wood fences. Tourists wear straw hats,purple sarongs,black thongs.
Food is colorful too. For breakfast there is white pineapple,orange and green cantaloupe,green apples,red papaya ,pinkish watermelon. Eggs are deep yellow and brown bread is baked locally.
Stiff brown coffee, the color of Mayan skin, tops off one’s morning meal.
Somehow, this breakfast looks and tastes better than a McDonald’s egg McMuffin.
Somehow,if you aren’t a prisoner, you shouldn’t be eating prison food.
Tulum has two faces.
There is the Hotel Zone which is a strip of bars, restaurants, hotels,and retail shops along the main road running along the beach all the way south to a biosphere nature preserve called Sian Kian. Then there is the Mexican town of Tulum where locals live. You can find tourists in the town of Tulum and locals in the Hotel Zone, but each is a different slice of Mexican pie.
This restaurant,Matteo’s, is in the Hotel Zone, towards the north end, and features, according to the sign, ” The Best Fish Tacos on Earth. ”
When questioned, these two kids maintain that the tacos are really the best in the Universe, but agree this would be difficult to prove since Mexico doesn’t send up space ships to verify.
In mid day, the restaurant is doing good business and fish tacos are swimming out of the kitchen.The kids give a thumbs up and let their picture be taken. I’ll be back for the best tacos on Earth.
Who would turn down such an opportunity?
The Rincon Railroad is for kids at heart.
Around the corner from the front office, the railroad town of Rincon has been created. On certain days of the week, on a strict schedule, railroad caps are donned, engine whistles toot, and trains roll around five different sets of tracks.
Frosty’s Diner is a favorite fifties stop on this line, and, if a visitor pushes a red button by the side of the tracks, jukebox music takes you back to when these railroad men were kids.
Inside, chocolate shakes are thick, hamburgers are bigger than the buns, a waitress named Flo tells her annoying customers to ” Kiss My Grits. ”
I would love to eat here but I am too big to fit inside the car.
Recent Comments