Just a little more about Yelapa, Mexico

I was a fourth grade pie lady

Exactly a year ago I published a story in Sunset about Yelapa, the Mexican village where I went to fourth grade and which I have visited nearly every year for 30 years. In it I waxed extremely nostalgic, basing much of my argument that it is one of the best places in the West on my thesis that it had barely changed at all in three decades.  

The Mister and Ollie on the panga to Yelapa

A lot of people traveled to Yelapa because of that story (I saw some of them holding the article in a plastic sleeve and consulting my restaurant recommendations!) and I sometimes feel a little squeamish about that.  Yelapa is a beautiful place, maybe even magical in its way, but I feel the need to set the record straight. So here it is, my revision:  

Yelapa has changed A LOT since I was a kid and there was no electricity and my friend Fermina had never seen a pizza and no one, not one resident, had a TV.  Yelapan teenagers dress like Kanye West now.  They have cell phones and designer jeans.  Gone are the pigs rooting around in the mud on the trail, in large part because the trails are are now PAVED with cobblestones, allowing ATVs to zip up and down. There are drug dealers and yoga instructors and a full-time doctor in Yelapa.  You can buy Diet Coke at the grocery store and hear Norah Jones at the taco stand.  If you go you will most likely see more gringos than Mexicans.  But the biggest change, the thing that made me sad and wistful like nothing else this year, was the total lack of pie ladies.

Yelapa has been known for its pie ladies, they of the sturdy calves and impeccable balance, who trudge up and down the beach selling fresh, homemade pie out of Tupperware balanced on their heads.  And now they are gone. It's the end of something good, truly.  I haven't had enough time to properly grieve and process this loss, but I know for sure that life will never be the same.

Still, the kids liked it.  

Maggie discovers her inner Cousteau

Ollie discovers his inner Luke Skywalker

A thing I like

I'm finally reading Obama's Dreams from My Father (my last drop of the Koolaid) and man, it's really good.  He can write.  I would probably even read this book if it weren't written by the holy savior of America.  This guy, this smart, human, complicated, flawed, compassionate person is our president.  It hardly seems possible.  Pinch!  

Turning 40 in Yelapa. Ole!

Last time we met I was off to Mexico and promising in my haste to discuss a million important things (such as the success or failure of my spray-on tan) upon my return. Well, I'm returned. The larder has been restocked. The laundry is in various states of washing and drying and waiting to be folded. The junk mail has been tossed, the checks endorsed. The sunscreen and bug spray have been put away. Let me just pour myself a glass of wine, and we'll settle in for a nice long chat.

We have so much to go over, so many adventures and mis-, that we're going to need a real working week to get through it all. Plus, as regular readers of this blog will attest, I've been a bit slack of late. And what better way to get back into the frenzied American pace than to commit to five full days of writing? I will picture you all as cranky overworked editors in soup-stained ties impatiently slapping the backs of your hands against your palms, demanding I file my next missive.

It was the Mister and Mark taking the kids up dangerous rocks

Let's start with Yelapa, Mexico, where I went with 17 family members and friends to celebrate turning 40. How was the trip, you ask? Well, it was so many things.

It was watching the chubasco from our open-air apartment

It was sunshine and blue sky, and it was unseasonable pelting drops of rain. It was hanging out with my dear friends, and it was fighting with my mom. It was our kids eating only white food for ten days. It was a pod of eight whales putting on a show, and it was a kidney-damaging boat ride on the pounding waves. It was heaven-sent piña coladas and a little touch of the Mexican revenge. It was bug bites, bee stings, and tetanus shots.

It was the invention of beach cereal

It was eating pie on the beach everyday. (That's right, I wrote "pie on the beach." And then I wrote, "every day.") It was turning 40. It was a shower of birthday Haikus recited in an outdoor disco. It was me feeling slightly anxious about making sure 17 people, ranging in age from 3 to 67 were having a good time. It was 17 people having a pretty great time in one of my favorite places on Earth.

It was customized birthday match boxes

It was Maggie forsaking her dinner for a lollipop

It was Julie reciting her Haiku a little tipsy on mango margaritas

It was me looking ridiculously drunk while Jono and

my dad discussed grant writing (I was sober)

Tomorrow's missive: Sayulita, boutique hotels, and why I regret ever becoming a travel writer. Plus, gringoes falling in cement holes prickling with rusty rebar, and, finally, the verdict on my spray-on tan.

Mexico redux: ailments, injuries, and issues

I believe I promised you gringos falling into holes:

In addition to all the fun and sun in Mexico, there seemed to be quite a few ailments, injuries, and issues in our group. Some of the usual stuff: upset stomachs, hangovers, bug bites. But also a few more dramatic problems like painful relationship woes, major road rash, and one nasty case of what is either Dengue or Typhoid Fever.

It all started when my sort-of sister, Jenny, fell into a giant hole in the cement while walking home in the dark. One minute she is striding confidently across a little pier/deck thingy over the lagoon, the next second, she is up to her hip in a hole booby trapped with rusty pieces of rebar, all of which miraculously missed tearing her open in any life-threatening way. Still, I've never seen such impressively multi-hued bruises or a rawer, oozier-looking wound.

If I had been the one to fall in the hole, you can bet your last peso that I would have been able to speak of nothing else for the entire week. I would have had people waiting on me hand and foot. I would have demanded gauze and pain pills and constant, fluttering attention from all parties. But after some initial crying, Jenny bounced back like nobody's business. Only to be felled the next evening by all-night vomiting. From which she also bounced back with gusto. They don't breed no sissies in rural Vermont, apparently.

Oh sure. I look tough.

In between Jenny's accident and Mark's case of tropical fever, Maggie was stung by her very first bee, I had stinging jellyfish larvae stuck in my bathing suit, the sun broiled the tops of my brother's feet, I barfed in the sink, Donna whacked the s-h-i-t out of her shin climbing out of a boat, and, as if that all wasn't bad enough, there was one day when the pie ladies ran out of pie before we could get to them. The horror.

And now, to Sayulita:

We arrived on Sayulita Day. There were 15 marching bands

playing simultaneously and dancing horses in the streets.

Sayulita is a dusty surfing town about an hour north of Puerto Vallarta. It is also, suddenly, like the hottest, most talked about place in Mexico. Daily Candy just wrote about it. I have a piece on it in this month's Travel & Leisure. Every young hipster with a henna tattoo and Frida Kahlo beach bag is suddenly smitten with the place.

I've been there only once before, six or seven years ago, but because it gets so much hype, I've wondered lately if maybe I've been missing something. Maybe, I thought, we should start spending our vacations there. Maybe we were fading away like last year's papel picado in Yelapa. Maybe Sayulita was the place to be.

from HERE

So we went. Just the Mister and me. For a little romantic getaway, sans twins. Mark and Chelsea were already there.

As I said, dancing horses in the streets

And this is what I say: "Eh," shrugging my shoulders in the universal Jewish gesture meaning I could take it or leave it. It has its charms: taco stands, palm trees, good coffee, nice boutiques, a very reliable surf break. But its beach is a sea of sizzling flesh and pushy vendors. The beach-front restaurants charge you $15 a day to sit in their beach chairs, even if you are eating there. The town is crawling with the aforementioned hipsters, swarms of young parents wrestling their Bob strollers over the cobblestones, and boomers in Guatemalan vests and baggy shorts. Plus, it has that I'm-more-local-than-you vibe that tourist towns get thrumming through it like a pulse.

Don't get me wrong. It's a perfectly fine town, and our hotel was charming, indeed. But the fuss? The cache? I don't get it. Which means we can stick with Yelapa. Whew.

Chelsea and I follow directions by lounging in

our hotel's rooftop lounge, my favorite place in Sayulita

This brings me very nicely to the problems with travel writing I wanted to discuss. But I think I'll save that for another day. Along with news of my spray-on tan. Please stay tuned. There is audio of my Literary Death Match appearance coming soon as well. It's going to be a big week. Promise.

Happy Birthday to Me

It's a long story, but let me just start by saying that today is the last day of my thirties and tomorrow, I will turn 40 and fly with my family to Mexico. And by my family I mean my husband and our two kids, the same ones who have been vomiting uncontrollably all day. I also mean my mom, my dad, my brother, one ex-step-mother, a former half-sister (it's a long story), and 8 friends.

We will be converging on Yelapa like a huge pile of buoyant, white flesh. We will eat so much fish and drink so much beer. We will have so much fun.

But we will not be blogging.

Because we will be remote. And having said fun.

But I will come back in 10 days and then I will tell you all about how my spray-tan worked out. And together we will revisit this list to see how it went. We will discuss my appearance on Friday at Literary Death Match (preview: it was fun. KFOG liked me).

In the meantime, enjoy the Olympics. Wish us well. Be nice.

We're here.  So far, so good.  Activities to date include:

-Happy hour margaritas down at the beach.

-Swimming in the pool.

-Much quesadilla eating.

-The kids trying to figure out the concept of Mexico.  Is that store Mexico?  Is that tree Mexico? It's all Mexico, we say.  Mexico is all around us.  They look at us like were crazy and then take off running down the beach like they've been here all their lives.

-One big fight with mom followed by a trip to the fabric store.

-Twelve hours of sleep (for us and the kids).

Tomorrow we leave civilization for Yelapa.  I'll report back in a week.  I certainly hope our trip is better than Mighty Girl's. Yikes!

Have a good one.  And drink some tap water in our name.

A thing I like

Twelve hours of sleep.