14 Friday Mar 2014
Posted in Travel
“I was born a bitch,” Frida Kahlo used to say. The folk/surrealist artist has long been revered in Mexico for her art, her brash behavior, her dismal life story, and her legion of lovers. We visited the Casa Azul, where she was born in 1907 and used as home base, in the old and beautiful neighborhood of Coyoacan, now a part of Mexico City.
03 Monday Mar 2014
Posted in Accommodations, Travel
.
Approaching Las Caletas beach from Banderas Bay. Credit: Vallarta Adventures
Marcia and I were happy to get seats in the front row for the outdoor show. Friends forever, we were catching up during her first trip to Puerto Vallarta, when suddenly she let out a shriek of sheer horror. Inches away from her knee was an iguana, its ruffled scaly crown waggling, its long rubbery tail slashing about. And it was big. As big as a man.
28 Friday Feb 2014
Posted in Travel
Finding apartments to camp in while abroad is the fun job that falls to me. I love it! Who wouldn’t love peeking into people’s homes in a foreign country? But I have learned much and am ready to pass it on to you, one step at a time:
20 Thursday Feb 2014
Posted in Accommodations, Travel
Tags
Our front yard here at Los Tules is a swimming pool. Right now, at 10 a.m., all of its 24 lounge chairs are occupied, as usual.
Five are occupied by people, one by a teddy bear, and eighteen by towels. The towels are meant to reserve the chairs for people who won’t come until later — people who don’t want anyone else to use these chairs until they’re good and ready to do it themselves. It’s not uncommon in resorts and along parade routes world wide, but here in Los Tules it is a very touchy subject.
03 Monday Feb 2014
Posted in Accommodations, Travel
“Pie lady! I’m the pie lady!”
She said this as though she were the Statue of Liberty. Yes, I’m what you’re looking for! We had indeed heard that when we got to the beach at the ancient town of Yelapa, fifteen miles southwest of Puerto Vallarta, we would find the pie lady roaming the beach, selling slices out of Tupperware. We bought a lemon meringue slice and ate it from our hands (she doesn’t offer forks) while walking down the beach.
20 Monday Jan 2014
Posted in Accommodations, Travel
(The beach at Boca de Tomatlan. Click to enlarge)
As in real life, which this is not, sometimes we set out to have a certain adventure, and then we have another adventure instead, which is probably better than the adventure we didn’t have. So it was with our trip south to the coastal village of Mismaloya. We didn’t know much about Mismaloya, including where to get off the bus.
03 Friday Jan 2014
Posted in Sentiments, Travel
Tags
allyouneedtoparty.co.uk
As I sit here I am surrounded by happy Mexican extended families and their kids and dogs. Los Tules is crowded because of the holidays. And though these are well-bred, peaceful folks by day, they don’t seem to have a fixed bedtime, and neither do their children. The party rages on, late into the night.
Mexicans, we have decided, love to party. It is one of their most endearing traits. And as an excuse to party, they have a wickedly long holiday season. We are only halfway through.
19 Thursday Dec 2013
To prove what a great husband he is, Tom booked us on a tour to Guadalajara, the second largest city in Mexico. It wasn’t just any tour, though, it was a shopping tour, and I saw more different kinds of stimulating marketplaces in three days than ever in my long life as a black-belt agoraphiliac.
16 Monday Dec 2013
Posted in Sentiments, Travel
The other day I was watching Portlandia in the afternoon down here in Mexico. It was that episode about the annual day in July when the first beam of sunshine returns to Portland after eight months of gray and drizzle. People come rushing out doors with their picnics, bongo drums, sun hats, skateboards, and guitars. I instantly doubled over with guilt, verklempt with shame, suffering a double dose of Sun Guilt in both art and life. The sun was shining, and I was inside making a bracelet. I should have been Out There. Continue reading
03 Tuesday Dec 2013
Posted in Travel
Tags
The Sayulita beach. (Click to enlarge)
Yesterday we hopped on a two-dollar bus for the one-hour trip to Sayulita, a fabled old surfing town that has blossomed, since the ’60s, into a chic-but-still-shabby cluster of shops, restaurants, and very expensive real estate. No big hotels, no high rises, and the 4,000 permanent residents all seem to know each other.
The Expat Almanac 