oh it has been a long time since i've written, and of course so much has happened. it's funny how excited i was in the beginning to write and now it's become something of a chore... but it's been that way with everything. i think i'm a little tired of the newness wearing off of things, a feeling that comes from the constant knowledge that i'll only be here for x amount of time. x amount of time is getting smaller and smaller and i'm struggling more to be here in the moment. there are times when i can achieve that, when i am here and nowhere else, not longing for anything, but by and large i'm still the same old impatient lucy.
but enough of that: i've got a lot of catching up to do. i guess i'll start with my birthday. i had a lovely party the evening before the 12th with tons of shrimp kebabs (they were amazing, with a great last-minute citrus marinade - i'll modestly defer credit to the many hours i've spent in the dreamaway), an excellent birthday pastel, and almost all of my favorite people here. notably absent were las inglesas who are currently touring mexico and that pinche jous, admirably demonstrating the concept of tiempo mexicano. despite this, and the copious amounts of mexican beer, awful old Spanish wine and tequila i drank, i woke up the next morning with a giant smile on my face feeling nothing if not 23 years old. i went to the oxxo and got a cup of joe and sat in the plaza and looked at the place i had chosen to live in all by myself, and felt pretty great.
the rest of the day played out as follows: hungover packing followed by hungover busriding with my best travelin' gal, josalyn. we arrived in tepic, the capital of nayarit, at about 7. our hotel was dirt-cheap but as well-appointed, clean and well-attended as had been advertised, and after checking in we ambled over to the center. we had a passably good dinner on the balcony of a second-floor restaurant seated far too close to a group of shouting americans watching futbol. we wasted no time in trading glances of the "oh-my-god-can-you-even-believe-how-awful-our-fellow-countrymen-are" sort but it turns out we judged wrong, as they offered to buy us not only a beer and bottle of tequila but paid for our entire dinner. they were actually really cool guys who were from california fighting fires in the region and even offered us a helicopter ride that unfortunately never transpired.
the next day we took a combi to nearby Lago de Santa Maria del Oro, a volcanic lake that apparently has no bottom (although after my initial awe i considered the fact that this might just be because no one has gone to the trouble of figuring it out). bottomless or not, the lake was absolutely beautiful and offered a lot of the tropical flora and fauna. we swam in the lake (the purported whirlpool at the bottomless bottom definitely kept us pretty close to the shore) and caught some great drummers of the traveling hippie variety as they moved through the palapas. finally we caught a combi back to tepic and readied ourselves to set off the next morning for san blas on the coast of nayarit.
san blas, "where the jungle meets the ocean," is a tiny fishing town that nowadays gets the majority of its tourist pesos from mexicans. apparently this wasn't the case 40 years ago, and the great hulks of empty blackening hotels that line the beaches testify to this. despite this, san blas has amazing surf, beautiful beaches and the associated smattering of gringos. we stayed in the "hundred years of solitude"-esque hotel los flamingos where i saw a bath tub for the first time in five months. (they also had robes, a cd for our listening pleasure, and a shoeshine kit.) the best part of the day, however, was the time we spent on la playa las islitas. i met a guy with two horses who came up to us and offered a ride. "too touristy," i thought, but josalyn urged me to give a try, and i'm so glad i did. i spent the next hour galloping across the beach on a white horse and swimming in a estuary where the water showed a rainbow of colors as the sand under it got deeper. when we came back, the owner of the palapa we had been keeping our stuff in gave us free chelitas and some, uh, other stuff. we also met his friend, a wonky old guy who reminded me of Grampy, and he offered us some of his specially crafted tequila and showed us a trick to divine true tequila: if you pour a little bit on your hand and rub them together until dry, they should smell delicately of honey or flowers. if it smells like alcohol, your tequila is crap (not to mention the fact that you'll reek of crappy booze). then he read my palm and told me that i was timid in life, but would have "muchos exitos" in five years' time. when the palapa owner's mariachi buddy started serenading me and giving me the puppy dog eyes, i elbowed josalyn and we hightailed it back into town. we would probably still be there if it were up to those poor old hombres.
the next day we had a great breakfast and left the sweltering heat of the coast for the just slightly less oppressive heat our beloved guz. and that's where i think i'll leave it for now. it was just about as close to glorious as a minibreak can get, and a wonderful way to ring in my 23rd year here.
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