Classic hits from the rainy side of Mexico include.. I Lost it at the Lavendaria, That Fishy Smell ain't your Feet, Raindrops Keep Falling on the Roof, and Duck and Cover! It's a long one...

Hello everyone!  Happy reading to everyone who''s jumped aboard our email list. We are working (slowly) to put our emails into a more blog like format. (Any blog sites that work easily from a tablet - send us the names...)....,on to the fun...

Our 5 days in Chacala had been truly charming. It is a slightly ramshackled, unfancy, tiny beach town - where locals outnumber the gringos. The beach is great.





 One can hike to an old cauldera (which, I think is an oxymoron - old/cauldera?) to find a
spectacular view of the town and coastline.



                      View of Chacala from cauldera.  Small and quaint!

And what beautiful sunsets...







 But that's about all. Chacala has several places to eat/drink and hang out. We've  met some wonderful travelers and locals that have made our time most memorable!

 The mood was set just days earlier when we got off the highway bus on our way to Chacala ...Mexican music played, a man burned rubbish and plastic ....we've missed that smell the past few weeks, along with a fruit/vegie roadside stand doing  brisk business. Instead of getting a collectivo for the last 9km or so to Chacala, some gringos stopped and told us to hop in. Nice!

                                              Downtown Chacala

The final  days in Chacala reminded us how quickly tropical rainstorms can appear. Along with the thunder and lightning, the monsoon downpour forced us to take shelter at a beach palapa and just wait it out until it passed or just walking back to our casa in the rain. One night we just had to brave it to get back to our place dripping wet,.....

Lost it at the Lavenderia.

The day we decide to take our laundry to a lavenderia, (the first time ever on a trip), an all-afternoon storm, along with a power outage struck. Clothes that should have been ready  by 5pm were going to be ready at 6, then 7pm and finally we're told to come back at 9pm. We head out to a local, little gringo house party to kill time. We return at 9pm, only to find the whole place shut. So, with our only damp clothes that we still wear, we return next morning and pick up our clean, sweet smelling clothes.

Chacala is built on a hill with cobblestone streets and a lot of red clay.



During rainstorms, all the water runs downhill and pools basically in one spot. The red clay becomes a goopy, sticky quagmire. Along with, and in the street run off, are all the usual and unknown suspects that gather in some toxic mess- gas, fish remains from the hosed down Pescadoria, the fragrant scent of sewer etc. Everyone walks around in flipflops, trying hopelessly to avoid sinking in the muck! Not to mention, it was quite a challenge to stay on your feet on the wet, slippery rocks in flip-flops or sandals, esp in the dark, using a flashlight with red water rushing down the streets!  Ha!

Our first casa/hotel was a cheap, empty 15-room place. We should have taken the hint.... Only 300 pesos, it didn't have hot water (was supposed to..) WiFi was sketchy, and the fresh fish store behind us scent (or sent??) us looking for a better sleep....We finally walked out and scored a great little casa run by a wonderful family. Quiet, clean, lots of hot water.....Casa Aurora only 400 pesos.  Very nice.

                                 Bougainvillea  seen everywhere!!!

On our last, rainy night in Chacala we hid out in a restaurant with friends from New Mexico and Chewelah, WA, listening and dancing to a Cuban band.  Was great fun!

We left Chacala on a wet, dreary, monsoon filled Super Bowl Sunday. Chacala was quickly turning into sticky, goopy mess more suitable for mud wrestling, than beach tanning. Our collectivo ride out of town started under the same dark cloud that had taken over most of this coastline, when a passing truck making its way through the narrow roads of Chacala managed to shear off the driver's side mirror. Our driver didn't miss a beat, as he just picked the broken mirror from the muck, threw it in the van and headed to Las Varas, our transfer spot for the bus to Aticama one hour north of Chacala. 

Las Varas proved to be a 2 hr plus wait. As has been the case during our travels in Mexico a guardian angel (Marciella) appeared from the gloom. Just getting us across the 6-lane intersection of highway 200 would have been enough, but over the next 2hrs, she made sure we were at the right bus stop, waved off cab drivers who tried to give a better deal, showed us where the best street food was to get a meal, and watched for our return from lunch as the bus stop had moved again. She even pointed out Yvonne to me as she came up the street after tracking down an ATM..(just in case I was worrying). She had zero English, and our Spanish was not much better, but she talked and talked to Yvonne in rapid fire. Yvonne found out all about her family, job and belief in helping people. Our bus finally arrived and, as it turned out, Marciella was taking it also. 

We arrived in a little beach town of Aticama...it looked so desolate, lonely and forlorn with the monsoon pounded down on it. As we stepped off the bus, one family looked at us as if we were beings from some distant planet. While it took some time to hook up for dinner with friends living in the area - we finally gave up waiting for WiFi or a taxi, found a roadside place to have a beer and watched the traffic passing by to see if our friends would drive in.



                                  Back view of this restaurant...

Finally, we just asked another expat if they knew them. Of course they did and they gave us a ride to their house as they lived just down the street.

With visions of going mad in the constant deluge and not much else to see in Aticama, other than watching the beach restaurants fire up their cook ovens using wood as fuel...(picture smoke mixed in with the rain)



 ...we moved up the coast the next morning to rainy San Blas.

Madness on the High Seas.... 

Interesting little town...San Blas could be called the Mexican Venice, as it really seems to be an island surrounded by water courses all heading to the ocean. After enduring another rainy day, the sun finally made an appearance in time for The San Blas Fiesta!! The festival honours a native priest who freed the locals from the invading Spaniards.

This annual event begins at around 3:30 when the local priest, parishioners and locals (plus a few tourists), gather in front of the 300 year old church and proceed with "native dressed" locals, through the streets towards the marina. They are carrying a 2 metre high statue of the native priest (actually looked like Jesus Christ) while a band played the same song over and over again, singers singing and fireworks going off. 

                       You can see the statue way in the back...


           Now the statue is nice an close to see with the band playing behind.

As the priest and his entourage board a shrimp boat the balance of the procession gets on an armada of boats and head out from a protected, sheltered channel into the open, choppy ocean.





                    The shrimp boat carrying its precious cargo...

.....These boats are generally overcrowded,  filled with mainly non-swimmers, little children, babies and no lifejackets........and they head out about 2 kms offshore to a giant, white (bird poop?) stained rock with a statue on the top which looks like it has been beheaded.


                                 We're heading straight to the rock!

,.......did I mention, accidents (which possibly could be many) wait to happen as they gather in the hundred or so boats to circle this giant bird pooped rock.  Of course, we managed to get a front row (as in bow) seat of the impending carnage, as we thought this would be too much fun to miss out on........

With the help of Hector (our new Mexican cousin), we scarf a free ride with a group of believers in a speed boat. The only thing I believed was that we had a good chance of swamping and ending up swimming around. In a boat more suited for lake fun, the 20 footer ended up with 12 of us on board. We managed to stall several times before even getting out of the channel.

The flotilla of boats looked more like the rescue at the Battle at Dunkirk (google that for more info). Boats of all sizes are decorated and all are taking people off the shore, from docks and madly charge out to join the religious flotilla...l'm sure many did pray for just that - the ability to float!

We get stuck in the bow, and take on most of the water directly that now courses over the bow and sloshes into the boat. I am sure we will go under as several waves break over us. Luckily the rain has stopped, the sun is out. What chaos out in the open water. We count our good fortune that we can swim and that there are dozens of boats, literally within in arms length to rescue us, in case things go down. Just laughing and happy to be in this chaos on the open ocean.

To add to the madness of this joyous event, someone has managed to climb the 20-30 meters tall rock and is looking to jump in. The boats/drivers sensing a spectacular finish to an already crazy day head closer to the rock. Shouts of "Jump! Jump!....we assume that was what was being yelled in Spanish.. along with..uno, dos, treize fill the air!Our driver sensing that now was a good time to retreat ...might have been the amount of bailing we were doing, or the smell coming from the engine...turns and points his boat back to shore.

                          We didn't wait to see if he actually did jump.

If possibly sinking wasn't enough fun, our driver decides that the idea of getting crushed by a much larger vessel should do the trick. We come up along side of the shrimp boat carrying the priests, nuns and big, wooden statue, and line up for a blessing for another prosperous/safe fishing season. The blessing from the priest almost is our end..(hey, at least we would have been blessed). As we struggle to come along side the much larger, heavier and more solid shrimp boat to be  doused with 'holy water' the waves push our front end into the side of the shrimp boat, our driver manages to avoid one disaster, only to have the stern end of our little, undersized and heavily overloaded boat smash off the back end of the shrimp boat coming close to the larger boat's wake in the rolling seas. We manage to avert a catastrophe on the high seas and return to shore slowly and safely...far ahead of the maddening crowd we've left behind! Needless to say, I wanted to buy Hector, our new Mexican cousin, a beer.

Duck and Cover....what we learned while watching (up close) a Mexican fireworks display!

Oh the madness! Oh the madness! On this same evening as the water fun.... thousands of people gather in the plaza in front of the church to watch a fireworks display. This is not just an ordinary display as most of us are familiar with, but an elaborate bit of engineering genius!! We watched earlier in the day as a small group of men begin to build a rickety, wooden structure that turned out to be about 15-20metres high when finished!!! Really! Held upright by 4 long ropes anchored to palm trees in the plaza the very  top has a firework filled wire butterfly shape. The entire tower was built from individual wooden box-like structures stacked on one another,  lifted higher to add another box underneath. And so it went up. The whole thing was tied and secured together with bailing rope. Fireworks designs protruding out on wooden poles go all the way up the structure.

Eventually, a signal was given to set it off...with hot cinders showering those closet to the action, screeching noise from the whirring fireworks and smoke drifting through the plaza the fun began.  In between setting off another and higher placed fireworks design, fireworks were launched from the church steeple across the street. With no crowd control barriers, and no officials warning everyone to stay back, the crowd enjoyed being sprayed by the mammoth size arc welding shower emitted from the fireworks. As things got higher and wilder, we kept looking to see when the tower would start to lean or fall. The climax came when the butterfly design at the very top of the tower was lit up. In addition, the church had a fireworks display down its front wall ablazing, while roman candles boomed from the steeple.

It will be hard to top that day - water and fire!  Amazing!!!  

Adios for now...we are heading inland to Guadalajara and region for the next while...  As always, let us know how you are doing in your corner of the world....Shayne/Yvonne