It looked like clearing in the morning, but there was one more rain to go, and then we headed out under heavy skies to walk to the north end of town. We went through some streets I haven't seen yet, but ended up on the main road where a guy hauled us into a little room where three guys were producing a local radio station. They were quite happy to see me and I shot a few pictures of them. Everything here sounds revolutionary to me - lots of yelling but who knows what they are really saying. Next door to the radio station was a woman selling whole rotisserie chickens. We said we'd come back after our walk. We continued along the main road and took a turn up a very steep hill towards the more expensive houses overlooking the town. Up and then down again, and there we were at the north end of the beach. We walked along this practically deserted beach for quite a ways. We got separated when Sal stopped to look at something and I walked by her. I got to the big rocks that separate that beach from the next one and decided not to risk it - the timing would have been precarious for the camera with the waves crashing against the rocks every minute. I found a dead puffer fish on a rock where someone had left it, and also a decomposing sea turtle about the size of a spare tire. I poked around with it for a bit, thinking I could take a bone with me, but it wasn't decomposed enough.
I asked two girls going through the rocks to send Sal back if they saw her and they informed me that she was behind me! This part of the beach is bordered by huge rocks and expensive homes and the rocks are covered with crabs and I even saw an iguana.
We also ran into Courtney walking her two dogs:
Iguana:
Three crabs: two red, one yellow
We went back into town and bought our chicken (whole chicken, two rice, sauce - $9) and had another look at the station. This time he insisted we speak into the microphone so we stupidly said "Hello Sayulita, Gracias!" and then the guy grabbed the mic and spoke in rapid Spanish for about five minutes, and the only word I could translate was "Toronto." He really didn't want to let us go but we had a chicken to eat so we extracted ourselves and went back to the hotel. It rained again quite hard in the afternoon and other than another political invasion had a pretty quiet afternoon reading.
The day started with a bang when one of the hotel staff saw a rat running up the stairs into the kitchen. She grabbed the maid and they started screaming. Of course Sal went running towards the rat and I had to stop her. She said it was a small one. The girl said it was the first time she'd ever seen a rat in all of Mexico. I'm sure it was an isolated incident, but they had to leave a trap in the kitchen to hopefully catch it. When we got back in the afternoon they found a small bird on the steps and actually came to fetch Sal to deal with it. She got her scarf and wrapped it up and put it in (my) hat for the day. Hopefully it will be recovered enough to fly away tonight. It's either some kind of swift or a baby swallow. It looks full sized but it's all brown and quite lovely. It spend the day in our room, Sal babying it when she could.
A few of the politico:
There's that "good guy" white hat again.
A little kid enjoying the water coming from the water spouts. This is a tie for my favourite picture of the whole trip.
No comments:
Post a Comment