Life As Canvas

We were sticky, we were tired. The Puerto Vallarta bus station was echoing the voices of families and their children playing, rolling luggage from the ticket counter to the door. I reflected on the Puerto Vallarta we were leaving behind - a cute town full of pasty tourists shuffling by in hawaiian shirts and flip-flops. We weren’t too impressed by the beach, honestly, and found that asking how to get to a nicer one only begged lies from the locals. “Can we take a bus there?” always tends to be followed by “No, only taxi,” and this never fails to be untrue.

The main beach was, itself, not made up of dreams, but a long expanse of brown sand filled with music, sunbathers, volleyball players, fish frying, and men in cowboy hats trudging back and forth with their stuff for sale, all this caught between a wall of hotels and short, powerful waves. We found ourselves tired of the vendors combing the beach, asking us if we wanted their silver, their blankets, their masks. Sometimes a woman would walk by holding up a picture of a little girl, asking if we wanted to buy. It took three or four times to realize she was displaying the her hair braiding technique, not selling little girls. So off we flip-flopped across hot cobble stones stopping each bus that came our way to step inside and ask. In keeping with the theme, no one wanted to give us a straight answer. When asked whether they went to the beach, we were told “No, that´s the next bus back there.” Upon asking the next bus, it was “No, that was that first bus up there.” They sent us around corners and up and down blocks. So finally we asked an Anerican expat who told us to get onto one and ride it to the end of the line, which we did, finding a lovely fishing village with cheaper taxi boats, saving 10 bucks each!

THEN we were at a nice beach. Nice water, nice waves, nice sand, nice sun. But we’re still looking for that beach of dreams. So out of Puerto Vallarta we went, taking another city bus out to the big regional bus station, about 20 min out of town.

The bus left at 4 and the woman said something about 5:30 so we figured that’s when it arrived. Manzanillo didn’t look too far on the map and the guidebooks had some nice things to say about it, like “calm lagunas” and so on. Guidebook talk. We settled into the air conditioning, sat back in our seats, and 30 minutes later, found ourselves in downtown Puerto Vallarta again. Oops. More tourists poured on and, by 5:20 we started to doubt 5:30 was really our destination time. I wrote, I listened to music, slowly time and the bus trudged on, stopping every so often for more passengers or so the driver could say hello to friends. (One city bus driver even got out and bought a taco before continuing on.)

From both sides of the bus the countryside stretched out, miming the paintings you see in Mexican restaurants back home. Rows of crops, horses tied to posts, small cement houses, deep blue sky and setting sun. Long, unending stretches of dirt in between it all. I like the dirt, it’s a nice break from the concrete and asphault that caps it all off in the ‘States. Soon enough, through the windows was only black and we bumped along over rough roads, hour after hour. At about 8pm the bus engines whined and we slowed. I saw an orange cone out the window and a silhouette of a man holding something long. On the other side of the bus there were three more. A military checkpoint. I got a shiver and repressed a nasty daydream or two. The overhead lights came on and one of them boarded the bus, silently walking to the back. He asked most of the young men to show their bags. He looked in Cyril’s, checking everything, even the camera case. I felt my heart tightening a little. No one spoke. When he finished, he got off the bus and we waited.

A local woman boarded, then, a little girl holding her hand. Behind her, one of the military men carried a baby. He smiled and laughed softly with the woman, waiting for her to arrange her things. I couldn’t help looking at the baby’s soft little legs with their translucent skin, ever the more delicate against his army jacket, rough and faded. He gave the baby to the woman, got off the bus, and we drove on to Manzanillo.

By 10:30 we tiredly waded through the passengers and out into the muggy night air. Six and a half hours of bus. I repress the frustrations that come with the slow transit here, reminding myself that travel is moving and in Mexico, moving is slow. But that’s part of the whole experience.

Manzanillo’s beaches weren’t much different from Puerto Vallarta, so off we go to Zihuatanejo tonight (9 hours!) to keep looking for the ones we see in our heads.

Tags: Manzanillo, Puerto Vallarta, Travel

This entry was posted on Monday, January 15th, 2007 at 11:17 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.