I meant to write more on Manzanillo while I was there, but the last remaining days have been a blur of activity. I'll start with my first official Mexican fiesta.
So, I mentioned Hector in my last missive. The point of this trip was to accompany his girlfriend Jenn south to meet him in Mexico (where he is from and where he travels to during the holidays to be with family). It's basically because of him that we're here, that we got this kick-ass condo, that we have a reason to leave the country for sandy beaches and warm sun. Thanks Hector! if I didn't already say that enough.
Well, Hector's aunt Rebecca and her husband Fernando invited us over for family dinner on Thursday. We're told that Claudio (their son) will pick us up at 2:00 pm. We're thinking: okay... nice family dinner, home-cooked meal, a language barrier to conquer: alright! We'll go, eat, chat, and be home in time for a dip in the pool before the sun goes down. Oh no. Not here.
What followed was 9 hours of eating and drinking. Oh, and I don't mean we ate, we had a beer or two, then shot the shit for a while. No, there was food coming at us from all angles the entire time. Any time one of us would try and stop the plates and plates of food, they just assumed we were being polite and gave us another plate. Before I could get to the bottom of a bottle of beer someone would whisk in, snag the remains, and replace it with another. And while normally this kind of drinking could easily get out of hand here in the states, in Manzanillo the drinking was paced with every dish, considered part of the meal; an addition to the festivities, not the cause of them. When I vocally refused any more food, Fernando took it to mean that it was time to digest for a few minutes. The solution for this? Tequila. "To help the digestion", he said. He cooked up this concoction I will never forget.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, lets talk about the food. From the start: home-made guacamole. And brothers and sisters, you have no idea what guacamole tastes like until you've had home-made Mexican guacamole. Un. Real. Served on tortilla rounds and washed down with beer. Then came fresh salad with honey-mustard dressing, cherry tomatoes, and carrots. Then the grill got fired up as the rest of Hector's family arrived: cousins and second cousins and the like. Then it was paper thin pork chops that literally burst with flavor. After that, it was chorizo sausages, split down the middle and grilled until they were just under-charred. While I have had spicy chorizo before, this was particularly amazing. The sausages weren't scald-your-face-off hot; more like a deep chili-like richness whose flavor didn't decrease with consumption but actually took a few seconds before coming alive in your mouth. After that came quarter-inch thick strips of filet minot, tossed on the grill with no seasoning required. More beer. Then, when we couldn't eat any more, Fernando indicated to me the truck below us and its cache of coconuts in the flatbed. He said (in his broken english), "We'll break those open for our tequila". When I showed that I was a little wary of the tequila, he looked at me very sternly then smiled and explained with hand gestures and Spanish and a few English words that, "We don't drink to get drunk. We're here with family. You are family now. It's okay. Okay? Okay." (A lot of 'okays' that night)
About those drinks:
One cup with ice
Pour in one large shot of tequila (Azul)
Pour in coconut juice til mostly full
Add a dash of fresh salt
Squeeze a bit of lime
Add coca-cola and mix.
Mmm mmm.
It was very hard to say "no more" to such amazing food. I was even more impressed that Lupe tried some of the meat. A bite and no more, but still. They were very persistent and she didn't want to be rude. When they found out Lupe was a vegetarian, they were very cool about it but Fernando went out of his way to explain that the meat was good. "Free range" cows and pigs, slaughtered yesterday on a farm down the street where they fed well and were treated right. By free range, I mean there was a man who owned a cow and a pig that was bought and slaughtered for the sole purpose of our meal. Kinda amazing. Kinda like real food should be. We finished it off with flaming bananas, freshly picked from Fernando's plantation. When we ran out of beer, Fernando called down to some vendor passing by on the street who entered the house, came upstairs, and delivered the beer to our cooler. Beer delivered. When we found out you could get KFC delivered to your door here, we thought that was the coolest thing. Having some guy unload a bucket of beers into your cooler from out of nowhere? This should be an option everywhere in the world. Oh god. So much food.
Fernando took an exceptional liking to me apparently. I think this is just the way men are in this country. They exude machismo and want to show you all they can about their successes while completely accepting you into their life and home as a host. When we joked about how Lupe and I were now homeless because of our travels, he and his wife both scoffed, smiled, and told us that we had a home with them. Kinda warms the cockles, doesn't it? Maybe it was just the 12 year old scotch Fernando insisted I partake of: his personal favorite and an expensive bottle made even more so by the fact that it is imported. They were floored when I drank it straight. They mix with soda water and ice. They couldn't believe I capable of taking shots of it: they just thought it was too strong. Who's machismo now, eh? Hehe.
We finally left around 11:00 or so: full to the brim, exhausted, and ready to sleep. The wanted us to stay the night but we all just wanted to crawl up the stairs of our condo and pass out. If we had known it was going to be like that, we probably could have prepared for it in our dress and luggage, but as it was we we're not expecting anything like that so we finally left. Amazing.
The next day, we made a plan to go and see the sea turtle sanctuary. Savino, our taxi driver extraordinaire, picked us up and proceeded to knock our socks off. The tortugaria was far away past the farmlands further down the coast, so he decided to take us on a tour of Mexico farming along the way. He stopped by a banana orchard, giving us a mini tour of the bananas and explaining how the bananas grow and the industry that supports a good majority of the area. We drove past mango trees and jalepeno farms stopping briefly at a salt flat where Jenn met a new friend: a
puppy dog that was lounging around the farm. We tasted pure, freshly harvested salt that had been pulled from their beds only a few hours ago. Unbelievable.
Then it was on to the turtles. The beach where the tortugaria is located has a fascinating history of its own. In 1932, a tsunami measuring over 20 km high hit the beach and wiped everything on it off the face of the earth. There is still a list of missing persons whose bodies were never recovered. The buildings at the time were made of thatch and wood and no trace of them remain whatsoever. Decades past, very rich people have rebuilt houses made of stone and concrete and amazing architecture there. The beach is one of 7 beaches where the sea turtles return to to lay their eggs. These 7 beaches are 7 of 8 in the world where the turtles return to. There are heavy fines for sea turtle egg poaching, carrying a minimum one year per egg sentence. This is one of Mexico's greatest conservation efforts: protecting and maintaining the ever-decreasing population of sea turtles in the world. They are beautiful creatures, colorful and huge and ancient. We got to hold babies that had recently hatched the day before who were going to be set into the ocean that night. Did you know that the temperature of the day can determine the sex of a sea turtle when it hatches? True story. When the weather is colder, more females are born. When the weather is warmer, it's more males. When the weather is juuuust right, you get lady-boy turtles. Just kidding about that last part.
The tortugaria not only houses sea turtles but some iguanas and even a few crocodiles. Oh, did I mention that our tour guide and information broker for the entire time at the tortugaria was Savino, taxi cab driver extraordinaire? Yeah, the guy knows everything. He spent the whole day with us. On the way back into town, he took us the long way around to a place where a man had been collecting iguanas in his own private open air zoo for 30 years. Huge orange lizards lounged in the branches of trees overhanging a watershed, basking in the hot sun. It looked like something out of prehistoric times. Words cannot describe it.
After all that day, the girls (being girls) still had it in them to go shopping at the mall. I caught a different cab home, swam in the pool, and called it a day. Our whole tourista trip that day? 9000 pesos. That's about $90 American. Between 4 people, that's less than $25 a person. Keep in mind: a cab ride from Vancouver, WA to downtown Portland is over $30.00 for what amounts to a 15-20 minute ride. Plus, I dare you to find a cabbie who will give you the grand tour of anything anywhere, ever!
Our last night together, we went clubbing at some place whose name I cannot, for the life of me, remember. Strong drinks, amazing service, beautiful women, and I danced my ass off. Left the club at 3:30 am or so with some serious hearing loss and quite the hangover waiting in the wings. Awesome.
We left Manzanillo last night and I am currently in a Holiday Inn just outside of SeaTac. Tomorrow, we head to Australia. I still can't believe this is my life now. Crazy.
More soon,
-d@n
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