Pride 2011

I'm lucky in that one of the biggest and best Pride events in the world occurs on my doorstep. Photographing Pride is like setting a kid loose in a candy shop. Not only are all the colours and people so extravagant, but they love to pose! Trying to get a candid shot is actually difficult. I tried shooting from the hip a few times with mixed results.

I went down with Sam and we stayed for the whole day. This was the day of the Dyke March and afterward there is a big street party on Church Street (gay village) which is closed off for the whole weekend. People just walk up and down and party and take pictures. Even the police seemed to be having a good time. There was no harassment or difficulties of any kind that I noticed.

They say 1 million people come into Toronto for this weekend, so it's quite extraordinary that it is such a safe, love filled event. Dorothy is right: there's no place like home!

Dykes on Bikes historically lead the march.

Mayor Rob Ford controversially did not attend. However, some visiting dignitaries joined in!

The neighbourhood community centre, which runs all manner of programs for the gay (and straight) community - the "519"

The hotel

I thought now that I'm back in town that I'd post a few pictures of the hotel B&B we stayed at in Sayulita, called La Casona. Click on any of the pictures to see them bigger.

The hotel sign is visible on the left. That's how close to the ocean it is!

Ignore the lump on the bed and just look at those windows, and the colour of the ceiling. The shutters are glass and really shut the window completely, not that I ever did. The big door to the left opens onto our own private L shaped balcony with two chairs, a table and a hammock. I love the arches over the doors.

The beautiful sink

The shower - there is only that clay divider in the window, no glass or screen. A nice big open shower with no door or curtain.

The common area, with two daybeds, several tables for the guests to have their breakfast.

This is standing in the common room looking towards the staircase downstairs. The room on the left is the kitchen (there's a crate of oranges on the floor). The window that has the hearts in it is visible here.

A detail to a window that is on the outside wall upstairs.

Daybed on the common area balcony. The staircase is on the left in this picture, with the potted plants along the edge.

A detail of tiles inset in the stairway.

The chairs on our balcony.

The stairs leading up to more rooms from the common room. A bit of the doorway to our room is visible on the right.

Part of the lobby, another day bed.

The kitchen. The wardrobe held all manner of beautiful Mexican pottery for every day dishes.

A better one of the sink - they provided a wine bottle of clean water and two (real) glasses.

The other half of our balcony, the bedroom window over my bed is on the right and the shower window is beyond. Behind that little window in the wall is the balcony of Lily room, which looks towards the town. Our balcony had ocean views!

Last day

Woke early and swam in the ocean for the last time. The waves were increasing in size and I got broadsided pretty good by a big one. I was watching the surfers catch it down the shore and realized too late it was going to break right over me. I put my hand over my face to keep my glasses from being washed away, took a deep breath and let it crash over me. A good metaphor for life.

I went back to the hotel and got Sal and we had our last breakfast at Paninos. She had latte and a brownie, and I had coffee and a croissant. I got my camera and we walked back down to the beach and watched the surfers, took pictures, and made friends with dogs. Then it was off to the bus stop.

At the bus stop an old man carrying what looked like homemade cheese in a bucket got on the bus, but not before giving an impassioned speech while squatting on his haunches on the sidewalk right in front of us. I don't know what he was saying but I got a strong feeling we were at the brunt of the joke. The other Mexicans around us were all enjoying it immensely.

The bus ride was a bit hairy, as before. The drivers like to pass each other over and over on the highway, come to a bus stop and both stop and then there's a race to pull out so you are ahead. The passing is complete with good natured obscene gesturing out the windows. It's quite entertaining. We passed a wreck with police directing traffic (again with the machine guns!) and an ambulance.

On arrival in Toronto the first thing I had to do was find a bathroom and the first bathroom in the airport was just disgusting! The toilets were unclean and broken, there was one sink that wouldn't turn off and it was overflowing, there was no soap or paper...this is a lot of people's first impression of Canada!

A few scary transport trucks later along the 401 we are at home, drinking duty free tequila on the front porch.

Just lying around on the beach:

Goodbye Pacific ocean. I love you.

After breakfast Sal and I decided to go riding in the morning, before it got too hot. By the time we set out it was 11 however, and the sky was blue and the sun was blazing. We found the horse riding place and signed up for a one hour ride. We had to wait about half an hour and then they took us to the river where the horses were tied up to trees. The ride was along the town roads, onto the beach, into the jungle, up the hills to the top, lookout point and back down. It was a bit hairy at times and buggy (malaria?) and the best part was running on the beach. As usual, I was too worried about the condition of my horse to really enjoy it. Poor thing was so hot. I tried to get his legs wet in the surf and he seemed to like that.

We went back to the hotel and dried off and changed. I walked down the street where the taco guy was back in business after a few days off. I kept watching for him to re-appear. He has the best tacos, with mahi-mahi. I sat on the street and watched surfers come and go and the cars changing position. If someone gets blocked in, they just open the car and move it. Everyone leaves their doors open and the keys in.

After that I got Sal to come and swim with me. We just went to the beach at the bottom of the street (main beach) and it was fantastic! The waves were huge. I had the boogie board from the hotel and a couple of times I surfed all the way to the beach on it, laughing my head off and getting a mouth full of saltwater. We stayed in for hours. Sal saw some guy with a dijeradoo thing and went and hung with him and his pals.

Once back at the hotel we decided to try Chili Willy's for dinner. I went ahead to get a table before it closed and Sal went back to the beach tables to buy a bracelet. Once I got there I changed my mind. I didn't like it and didn't want to be rushed on my birthday. We went back to Miro Vino's instead. Miguel was there, and I met Storm; Courtney's betrothed. We had arugula salad with goat cheese and cherry tomatoes, and seafood ceviche, and tuna carpaccio, which Sal pronounced "Caravaggio." There was a religious procession going by to the church so we changed seats to sit up front overlooking the street where we could hear the singing. The bar music was pretty good too.

Wound up the evening back at the hotel where I sat on the porch reading "Life" by Keith Richards, and funnily enough, I heard the strolling band, the ones with the harp, singing "Happy Birthday" to someone on the street. I liked that. Later, I heard some drunken Mexican go by singing "Satisfaction" from the Stones.

Small world.

June 23 - My birthday

The day started well. I woke early, still dark and checked my phone for the time. 6:30. I quietly rose and dressed and went down to the water. It was so dark I wondered if my phone was wrong. I went right to the water's edge and sat and waited for the dawn. The sun didn't come up in that glowing orb kind of way. It just got progressively lighter. At first I wasn't sure if the sun was coming up or the moon, which was still high in the sky, was lighting the beach. But then suddenly it was day. I decided to walk along the beach to the end, where Sal and I were yesterday, to see if the crabs were more active at this time of day. I passed three fishermen in a boat a ways out and they started waving their arms and whistling. I thought they must be hailing a friend behind me and I looked around but there was no one there. When I got closer they yelled out "How are you today?" What the hell? Are there really people this nice in the world? Broad smiles all around. They weren't having much luck but the pelicans were bobbing about beside the boat, so close they could have reached out and patted them on the head like obedient Labradors.

I walked to the end of the beach and up to the rocks, but the crabs were all in their crevices and not much was happening. There was an eerie sound coming from the rocks that I wasn't quite sure could come from a bird. I thought a lizard maybe, since now I know they can make bird-like sounds.

I turned around and started back and I saw a little silver fish, about an inch long, flipping and flopping at the edge of the water, desperately trying to get back to the ocean. I scooped it up and tossed it into the waves. Thus my birthday begins with saving a life.

I continued up the beach where I could now see a few people starting to join me. Some surfers, some more fishermen throwing nets from the beach. I saw a fellow we had spent some time with on the street chatting and he was fishing with a rod from the beach. He's about 25-28, deep brown and dreadlocked, and dressed in the official Sayulita uniform of board shorts worn low on the hips and nothing else. As I passed he grabbed my hand to shake it and pulled me in and kissed me on the cheek! It's official - the people here are so friendly it's shocking. I'm not used to it. And let's be clear here - I'm a middle aged grey haired lady. No beach babe.

I came back to the hotel to shower and breakfast and check my computer. I think Paninos is in order - some cake for the day!

ps the baby bird was gone by nightfall.

Day 6 - Wednesday

Rain last night - lovely pouring rain. It still didn't drown out the loud music from the square. Some of the other guests here spent the night barhopping and having double shots of whiskey and beer chasers for $5 Cdn., tequila shots and margaritas. I think they just got up at around 7pm.

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.

Day Five, Tuesday

I spent the morning trying to get to the bottom of my bank fiasco. Yesterday I went to two bank machines thinking the first one was out of order, but neither of them gave me any money. I had the bright idea to check my bank account online and sure enough, the money was withdrawn. I wrote the bank and they got back to me very quickly and it turns out they changed my card to deposit only. I think the fraud squad decided since I never travel that a criminal had used my card in the PV airport. Luckily they let me use the hotel phone and I was able to dial a 1-866 number and talk to the bank people. They fixed my card pretty quickly but to get that money back in will take "an investigation." I was on the phone for half an hour, most of it trying to convince them I am who I am. After that we decided to go to crab beach. We walked along the beach and up the rocks again and there were only a few people there. I'm sure it's a well used beach in high season, but it's practically all ours right now.

We swam and read and ate chips and then a bunch of Mexican guys pulled up in a truck armed with machetes. One of them shimmied up a palm tree and cut a huge bunch of coconuts which fell heavily. They ran to avoid getting beaned by the coconuts, and then they gathered them up. If they broke when they fell they got to those ones first to try and save the water. One of the tourist police trucks also pulled up and four cops piled out to watch, all heavily armed with machines guns held casually. What kind of crazy scene is this?

The whole time we are sitting there keeping an eye on the proceedings, hundreds of crabs are crawling over the beach, moving as fast as lightening. Every so often you'd see a hermit crab lumbering along slowly. You could never get close to the ones that scurry as they dive down their holes at the least provocation.

One of the machete guys took a green coconut over to a table and started hacking all the green stuff off it until it was a little brown coconut. Then he chopped a neat little hole in the top and plugged it back up with the piece of coconut meat. He caught my eye (we were about 50 yards away) and held up the coconut and nodded. How could I resist? It doesn't get any fresher than that. I nodded back and he walked over while I pulled out my wallet. I said "how much?" and he said "nada" and handed me the coconut. The other members of his team started cleaning the beach with rakes, cleaning the seaweed, of which there was about five clumps altogether. They cleaned the beach and then they cleaned the clearing to the beach. The police watched all this with their guns hanging off them, and then they got in their car and drove away. The coconut guys put all their cleaned coconuts in garbage bags and piled them up ready to take home.

Suddenly a huge rogue wave started coming up the beach and threatening our little camp. I yelled for Sal to grab stuff and run and there I was with about half a second to decide which to save - my $2000 camera or my coconut so of course I grabbed the coconut and ran. Luckily the wave didn't get to my bag, but soaked my book. By the time the next wave came I was ready and got the rest of our stuff. We set up a few feet up the beach and resumed our reading/coconut drinking. At about 4 we headed back to town and this time we followed a dirt road back in and discovered it comes out RIGHT at the back of our hotel. So now we know the easy way there. Then I went to a bank machine and it finally worked. I was totally broke and a bit worried.

We are not the artists, but whoever did it was talented - life size!

Also I forgot to add during the walk through the cemetery we saw a beautiful blue parrot like bird but I could not get a picture of it. It's this one:
http://www.bird-stamps.org/books/82.htm

Oh, and if you are reading this, feel free to comment!