Working Vacation

At the second welcome party I attended during my first week in Mexico, a teacher described the life here as, “A working vacation.” Boy, did that have a nice ring to it. And man, he wasn’t kidding. I’m on year three here and I still feel like I’m on a working vacation. That’s not to say we don’t work hard at our school. Like most teachers, we work ridiculously hard, often ten hours a day and sometimes more on the weekends. However, when we are not working—then it’s pure vacation-like fun.

I realize I have already extolled the many wonders of Mexico City in previous blogs, but let me just say that after two years here, I continue to be fascinated, surprised and enchanted by all this city has to offer. Just recently, I went to have some happy hour drinks with my pals Ryan and Dean in a restaurant that has two lions in the courtyard. (They were in cages, not wandering freely among the tables.) And despite being in relatively small cages, they behaved in a way that made me think there were not entirely unhappy, playing like two cats. So, living in Mexico City continues to be an exhilarating experience, unique and exciting.

And then, there’s the rest of Mexico; so much to explore. The people I work with are constantly heading out to the beaches for surf fun, off hiking volcanoes, or white water rafting, or just visiting the scores of beautiful Mexican colonial towns. Every weekend someone is off somewhere. And like so much of what we do here, whether it’s watching football at Caliente’s—the gambling house with all the games on—playing Frisbee, followed by lunch on Saturdays, going to see our buddy Jason DJing at a local venue, meeting for Sunday morning barbacoa at Parque Espana, visiting a new show at a museum, the weekend excursions are often done in groups as well. A constant flow of new opportunities at each weekend or vacation: awesome people, great friends, traveling around together in Mexico on their ongoing working vacation.

One such weekend occurred not to long ago. We were invited to celebrate our friend Erin’s birthday by getting a house with a pool by Lake Tequesquitengo. And get this—jumping out of airplanes too! (With parachutes.) Unfortunately for Ale and I, my RSVP to Erin’s boyfriend Hector sat unsent in draft email form without me realizing it. Consequently, we were only able to get in on the deal for Friday night. Luckily, I had some paternity days I was able to cash in, so I took off Friday and we headed up before the rest of the group to have the house to ourselves for the day. The house was quite nice, with a large patio area with a pool adjoining a nicely landscaped yard over looking the lake.

We arrived in the early afternoon and after a quick shopping trip to the local tienda, we settled in to our weekend villa. While the maid made us lunch and drinks, we took Miguelito for his first swim in a pool. He was slightly freaked out at first but eventually got into it. He was naked, so I was slightly concerned about him squirting some of his mustardy yellow shit into the water. Thankfully, he maintained some self control. After our swim we sat in the yard reading and drinking some more until the sun began to go down and we were all ready for a nap.

After a few hours of blessed sleep—naps are not something I often get to enjoy much since the baby arrived—we got a call from the rest of the gang looking for some directions, as the place was a bit tough to locate. We got up and began our Friday party as people trickled in throughout the evening. One of the cool things about this weekend was that there were a lot of people there that I had never met. Erin has a knack for meeting random people and befriending them. So besides some of our core buds, there was a dose of new people, some meeting each other for the first time. There was a guy from Spain, a couple of guys from England, a computer dude from Oregon, a girl here doing her PhD work, all interesting and friendly folk. Miguelito came out for a while and was passed around among the girls. Soon, someone was cooking up some quesadillas with mushrooms and we laid into those. With a big day ahead for many of us who would be skydiving, people trickled off to bed one by one and two by two. Jordan and I, well into a bottle of Jack Daniels, were the last men standing in the wee hours of the morning, and bonded even further with a skinny dipping session before heading to bed. Suddenly, I had a brilliant idea. I went up on the balcony and threatened to jump into the pool. Since the “deep end” was only five feet deep, Jordan argued against it. I was still not dissuaded until he pointed out how stupid I would feel if I was unable to skydive the following day if I had broken my ankle the night before. For once, I erred on the side of caution.

Despite the significant drinking until 4am, I lept out of bed at 7:30 am eager to jump out of a plane at 13,000 feet. Driving to the jump location, we passed several groups of burros, some practically blocking traffic. When I commented on this, Tina—ever ready to argue with me—said definitively that they were mules. She explained that mules were half-breeds between horses and burros. I told her that I was aware of what constituted a mule, only the little shaggy spindly legged things on the side of the road were, in fact, burros. “Did you grow up on a farm, Mike?” she challenged. It was with great pleasure that I was able to say, with some truth, “Yes, Tina, I did.” (I didn’t point out that while we had a horse and a pony, chickens, geese and rabbits, we never hosted any burros.) The rest of the crew in the car burst into laughter. Tina’s bluff had been called! The great and frustrating thing about my arguments with Tina is that they are virtually never resolved. But, this time, she was stumped. (Though, I’m certain she’ll never admit it.)

When we arrived at the skydiving place, we got a good gringo laugh to discover they were not open yet, even though it was past the advertised opening hour. Thankfully, it wasn’t long before the workers arrived and we began our training. There had been some nervous joking about using a Mexican company to skydive, being that attention to detail is often not the strong suit of Mexican business. But, this place was legit. Very professional, friendly and thorough. My tandem guy spoke perfect English, having studied in Miami for college. He talked about how much partying he had done there, and I thought perhaps that was why he was now a jump instructor. As we floated down to earth an hour later, I would come to find out how very wrong I was. His father owned the company and he’d been jumping since he was five years old. He was a nuclear physicist who had just finished his masters degree in Belgium and was heading back to Munich for his PhD. In a sad commentary on Mexican progress, he admitted he’d need to work in the U.S. or Europe after he graduates, since there is no nuclear energy program to speak of in Mexico.

The jump was fantastic. I’d skydived once before and it was so mind boggling and overwhelming that I remember landing on the ground and feeling like I had just woken up and didn’t properly savor the experience. This time, I was much more relaxed and really focused on enjoying both the freefall and the float down. Also, the first time was in a bigger plane in which you had to “jump” out. That part was hard. Your brain is telling you very clearly that jumping out of a plane when everything on the earth is just little dots is a stupid idea. This time, the plane was much smaller, and we worked our way out of the small door onto a metal leg jetting out to the plane. He stood on that with me strapped beneath him and he did the release into the great wide open without me having to make an act of volition.

After our jump, we headed back to the house and got into a serious pool party. The maid was busy making drinks and snacks while we all enjoyed the sun, the pool and the view. By mid-afternoon it dawned on me that we must have been at a significantly lower elevation that Mexico City because the temperature was significantly hotter. There were swim up tables where the pool and kitchen met, so staying cool in the pool while you had your drinks became the name of the game. Throughout the day, even more people showed up; at the height of the party there might have been 25 people there. More than once I said, and heard others say—drink in hand, floating in the pool, overlooking the lake—“this is some life we are living.” Later in the afternoon, the maid cranked up the grill and cooked up a slew of meats and vegetables we had purchased, along with some quesadillas. It was a fantastic feast that left us all quite stuffed.

As the evening wore on Ale and Miguelito and I snuck off to take another brief nap before getting ready to go out for Erin’s birthday dinner. The owner of the house actually owned the restaurant and the meals were included for those paying to stay at the house. (Some people were sleeping in tents in the yard—though we didn’t volunteer that information to the owner.) The meal was OK—nothing to write home about--but it was a good opportunity to further get to know some of the new people I had met during the weekend. I got to hear more about the PhD girl’s investigation into Mexican-Cuban relations during the Seventies and was jealous of her being a student.

After the cake came out and Erin blew out the candle, Ale and I packed Miguelito in the car to drive back to Mexico. Our room would be occupied by Dean and his girlfriend and her sister that night. (I keep forgetting to ask Dean how that went, as there was only a large, single bed in the room and two sisters to share it with!) Our friends Kristen and Jordan decided to join us for an early departure. 24 hours of straight partying had taken its toll, and there were extra people who could use their room. Waking up at home in their own beds, ready to watch football was a prospect well worth the two hour drive home at midnight.

All in all, it was another fantastic “working vacation” weekend. And the truth is, it’s just one example of the many great trips we take throughout the year. For some reason, it’s the sort of thing I would rarely do in NJ. But, here, hitting the road with friends for adventure is quite the norm. I heard later that those who stayed on Sunday continued the pool party, even jumping in groups from the balcony into the pool. The pictures I saw sure made it look like fun. I KNEW I should have jumped when I had the chance!

VIVA MEXICO!!

For those many gringo friends of mine who somehow still manage to think Cinco de Mayo, or the 5th of May, is the date of Mexican Independence, let me clue you that Mexican Independence Day is celebrated on the eve of September 15 and the following day, September 16th.

It all started 199 years ago in 1810. The world had witnessed the American Revolution transform British colonies into independent states, whose laws and institutions were firmly based in the ideas and values of the Enlightenment. The French soon followed with an attempted Enlightened Revolution of their own. Lacking the historical and cultural democratic experience of the Americans, the French Revolution spiraled into a bloodbath of beheadings and wars until a general named Napoleon assumed control, declared himself emperor, and effectively ended the first attempt at a true French republic. As Napoleon expanded his control and influence over much of continental Europe, he placed his brother Joseph on the throne of Spain. Consequently, Mexican authorities found themselves beholden to a crown they rightly rejected as illegitimate. Many upper class Spaniards migrated to Mexico, where they fomented anti-French and Mexican nationalist sentiments. One person caught up in this new movement was a creole (a Mexican of pure Spanish decent) priest who was both as popular with the mestizo (mixed race Mexicans) and natives as he was unpopular with the church (he was tried by the Inquisition) for his Enlightened ideals. He was working with other anti-French and Enlightenment influenced creoles on a plan for armed insurrection when the plot was prematurely discovered in the nearby town of Queretaro. Before the authorities could squash their plans, he quickly rang the bell of his church in Dolores, where he addressed his congregation in the town square (or zocalo) just before midnight.

No record of his apparently inspirational speech survives, but the reenactment of this call to arms (El Grito—“the shout or cry” in Spanish) is the centerpiece of the celebration that kicks-off Independence festivities every year in Mexico. Today's El Grito consists of some reconcrtucted version of the original cry being recited, followed by acknowledgement of the founders, "Viva Allende!" (crowd): "VIVA!" "Viva Morelos!" (crowd): "VIVA!" "Viva Hidalgo!" (crowd): "VIVA!" And it ends with,"Viva Mexico!" (crowd): VIVA! (repeated three times). These reenactments happen in zocalos big and small in cities and towns all over Mexico at 11 pm every September 15th. The reenactment of El Grito is followed by fireworks, dancing, singing and drinking into the night. This explains why the national day off from work for independence occurs on September 16th, not September 15!

Hidalgo and other early revolutionaries were summarily captured and executed, but the revolutionary genie could not be put back in the bottle and the war against the French illegitimacy raged on and was almost immediately turned into a war for complete independence from any foreign crown. Spain finally acknowledged the reality of an independent Mexico in 1821.

Ale and I celebrated our first Grito on our first weekend away together to Queretaro, and then to San Miguel de Allende, home of another early founding hero, Ignatio de Allende. On September 15, the quaint colonial square in San Miguel was awash in a festive atmosphere, filled with tourists, vendors of all sorts and Mariachis throughout the day. By evening it was completely packed with celebrants waiting for the mayor to appear and reenact the “Cry of Dolores.” After El Grito, when the fireworks went off on the huge towering carrousel built in the plaza, the people crammed underneath it began a mad dash in all directions away from the falling flames, burning gunpowder and choking smoke. This, of course, caused a ripple effect in the crowd which resulted in us almost being crushed. We were literally being lifted off our feet and moved feet at a time. It was quite scary for a moment, yet most around me were laughing. (If you are asking why authorities didn’t cordon off the area underneath the fireworks carousel, you obviously have not lived in Mexico.) It was exciting and crazy experience, and devolved into dancing and merriment in the streets; no harm no foul.

This year, a head cold had me feeling a bit under the weather so we invited some friends over for a few drinks and some “servicio a domicilio” or food delivery. My friends showed up, Ryan wearing a national futbol team jersey, and Tim sporting a giant Mexican mustache, sold along with Mexican Flags on the streets during this time of year. The mood was mellow, but enjoyable. We were hoping for sushi but discovered that us dopey gringos had waited too late on Independence Eve and had to settle for cheeseburgers and curly fries. THE Zocalo in El Centro here in Mexico City is ground zero for El Grito, where the president conducts the reenactment before tens of thousands in front of the National Palace and for millions on TV. It rained—hard—all evening, so those who stood there for hours were true patriots. By 11pm the rain had slowed enough for us to go up onto the roof of our apartment building and watch the fireworks from the Zocalo. The HUGE red, green and white bursts were impressive even from a few miles away in the rain. Simultaneously, there were visible displays from at least four other distinct launch sites, as well as various other wannabees launching the occasional missile from around the city. The sounds and sites of Mexican independence reigned down across the cityscape of 20+ million like the rain coming down from the heavens.

The next day we slept in (well I slept in, Ale was up early feeding the baby) and awoke to a beautiful sunny day in which the city appeared washed clean by the heavy rains. After I finish writing this blog, we are going to check out the Bellas Artes museum downtown where there is a visiting El Greco show. If that’s closed today, (the website makes no mention of being closed for the holiday) we’ll maybe head over to Chapultepec park, the giant forest filled with museums, a castle, lakes and an amusement park. It’s a great day to live in a great city, in a great country, in a wonderful world. Viva Mexico!

PS. If you’re still wondering what the hell Cinco de Mayo is all about, quite simply it is a celebration of the victory of a smaller Mexican Army over a much larger invading French Army at the battle of Puebla, on the plains outside the city of the same name that lie a few hours south east of the DF. The French, who had come ostensibly to force Mexican repayments of defaulted international loans, eventually ended up conquering Mexico and installing Austrian Prince Maximilian on the throne, until liberal forces, supported by the US, helped overthrow his French puppet government restoring Benito Juarez to the presidency. Still, the victory symbolizes Mexican pride and resistance to foreign influence and control. Why this day has become a significant holiday in the U.S. (it’s not big here) is likely because beer, chip and dip companies needed a spring holiday to push their products. May Day, the international socialist workers rights day, just doesn’t have the same festive ring to it.

Photo: President Felipe Calderone issuing El Grito in the Zocalo from the Palacio Nacional.

Ya Llego! (He's finally arrived!)

Well, it was a long time coming, 39 weeks to be somewhat exact (I still have yet to get a firm grip on the due date predicting process) but on August 1, 2009 at 8:53 am, in Torreon, Coahuila, Mexico, our son Miguel Alberto Hennessy Diaz Alvarado was born. It wasn't exactly pretty. I mean, maybe it was pretty as far as Cesarean surgery goes, but from a layman’s perspective it was pretty gruesome. They just sliced her open and yanked him on out of there, no "gootchie, gootchie-goo, are you ready to enter the world, little fella?" Nope, they just grab 'em by the ankles and yank con mucho gusto. Ale had no clue what was going on as her view was blocked from all of the gore. I tried not to look, but when I did, I was reminded of the first ten minutes of Saving Private Ryan. I literally saw her guts oozing out. Not cool. Really, really not cool. (We would learn a week later that her bleeding had been abnormally profuse.) Thankfully, Ale was completely oblivious to the horror show talking place in her abdomen. Why wouldn’t she be? She was locally numbed and mildly jacked up on happy gas. And there were no obvious clues for her. The doctors were goofing around during the operation like they were socializing at an after work happy hour. The anesthesiologist sat off to the side reading a Harry Potter book. (Is this proper procedure?) So, I played along too, telling Ale that “it doesn’t look so bad, and everything is fine.” And meanwhile, on the inside, I was totally freaking out. I tried not to react outwardly—like squeezing the shit out of her hand—which I caught myself doing—and just kept chatting with her to keep her distracted and calm. I was cracking jokes to her like, "hey, while you're in there how bout sucking out some fat, or sewing up my stomach a little tighter, or taking a look for my missing USB..."

But, I don’t want to mislead you; this birthing process hasn't been all fun and games. Some of you have already heard about the insurance disaster that befell us on the road to parenthood. We had reviewed my insurance policy manual from work before we were married and were happy to learn that all we had to do was tell them we were married and "poof!" Ale was covered under my plan. The insurance offered a pretty good maternity package—not enough to cover everything soup to nuts—but enough to make it very bearable, so we decided to get right to work (if you know what I mean!) as soon as we were married, which we did. But, of course, this being Mexico and all, there had to be a glitch somewhere. Such as my school renegotiating the insurance plan over the summer in a way that altered the previous maternity coverage, and not alerting the employees (read: me) to this fact. Yes, (as they would later enjoy pointing out to us) they had put a new insurance manual in every teacher's mailbox at the beginning of the school year; but, it was one of many, many things shoved into my mailbox that first week of school. And I had no reason to believe it wasn't exactly the same manual as the same colored and titled manual I had received a year ago when I started working at ASF. I was very wrong.

It seemed there were many significant policy changes reflected all over the new manual, including this little beauty that had not been in the manual we used to make our decision to get pregnant: "childbirth is covered only after a waiting period of 12 months." Of course, we did not discover this minor point until Ale had been on the policy for six months, just three months before we were due to give birth (I say "we", knowing she did all the work in the pregnancy and birth—if you know what I mean). This was when Human Resources informed Ale that the 9,000 pesos of reimbursement she was seeking for prenatal doctor visits was unavailable to her according to the new insurance policy. She further learned that even though I was an employee in good standing who had been paying into his insurance policy for two years, and was legally married to a woman who had been an officially declared dependant member of my insurance plan for 6 months, we would not be receiving any maternity coverage. ANY COVERAGE. Zero. Zilch, Goose egg. Or as they say down here in Mexico, “nada.”

Sometimes things are so screwed up you just can't even get too upset about them. And in life (and perhaps especially in Mexico), you almost begin to expect this kind of stuff. So, I didn't go postal on anyone, though the urge was there for about two minutes. Our baby was going to be born four months before Ale would be eligible for any maternity coverage and there did not appear to be much we could do about it. We would have surely waited four months if we had known and saved ourselves thousands of dollars. Though I must say now, as I sit here typing and looking over at Miguelito in the crib beside me, I wouldn't trade this particular baby for all the insurance coverage in the world.

Besides, in the end, things got much better for us with regard to the maternity costs. At a meeting I had with the school's director, he and the head of Human Resources, said we were indeed uncovered for childbirth but at least were honest enough to admit it would have been a good idea to have notified the employees that the insurance coverage had changed over the summer. “Note to self for next year,” he said, and actually scribbled a note on a pad, (though it could have been an obscene sketch for all I know, like that guy in The Big Lebowski drew when he pretended to write something down). In a good faith effort he said he would talk to the insurance company and see what he could do. I wasn't expecting much, so I was pleasantly surprised when he came back and said he had talked them into covering 20,000 pesos of the total costs. Not too shabby. Of course, we are waiting to find out how many of the receipts will be accepted when we turn them in. One t left uncrossed or i left un-dotted in standard Mexican bureaucracy is enough to get you a "no podemos aceptar esto”—we can’t accept this.

We definitely appreciated the efforts of my boss in getting us 20,000 pesos of re-imbursement coverage. That was nice for sure; but from our perspective it was the lack of communication on their end that caused us the problem in the first place. It was what happened next that really floored us. It happened at the end of the year party I hosted to honor and celebrate the ASF friends that would be leaving us at the end of the year. The centerpiece of the event was a 17 minute slideshow I put together featuring pictures of us all laughing, playing, traveling, laying on beaches, climbing mountains, rafting rivers, partying, singing, dressing up in costumes, watching bullfights and futbol matches, dancing, and…well, yeah, and drinking little bit along the way. After the slideshow was done, my good friends Jordan and Will unexpectedly jumped up front of the room, busted out a bunch of items and began telling everyone it was time for the drawing of the raffle they had conducted previously at school. WTF? A raffle we would come to find out raised 12,000 pesos for the “Miguelito Birth Fund.” Wow. We were shocked, elated and humbled. I thought of the movie, It’s a Wonderful Life, where Clarence the angel writes to George, the despaired man, “no man is failure who has friends.” It was an overwhelming gift and an awesome display of friendship. We are sincerely indebted to everyone who contributed, especially Jordan who apparently spearheaded the idea.

These two windfalls were great, but they only got us about half way to full maternity coverage, so we decided to do something drastic. We’d have the baby in Torreon, Ale’s home town, a thousand miles north of Mexico City where the hospitals are just as nice--if not nicer--and half the price. And it was also the place where Ale’s cousin had graciously offered to deliver the baby for free. This meant that immediately after coming home from a visit to NJ in early July, Ale would have to head to Torreon and begin the final preparations for D-elivery day. Meanwhile, back in the DF, I took some Spanish classes in the mornings and spend my evenings remodeling the Miguelito’s room and painting the apartment. It was a long time for us to be apart, but we needed to focus on saving money. Any sort of abnormality with the birth and we would be flying without an insurance net. And we remained acutely aware of the loss of income from Ale in the months following the birth.

After three and a half weeks living alone I hit the road in the 1996 Jeep Cherokee that my buddy Will sold us. (Well, he left us the keys to the car when he left for Chicago. He’ll be lucky to see one peso of that money. Sucker!) Driving to Torreon would take about 12 hours—without any sort of complications. My plan was to drive to Zacatecas, a beautiful colonial silver mining town a little over half-way on day one, spend the evening poking around the town and be in Torreon by Friday afternoon to take Ale to the hospital for her scheduled admittance for a C-section by Friday evening. For anyone who’s toured around Mexico on the highways, you know that you often see cars on the side of the road with their hoods propped up and the 16 passengers standing around scratching their heads in the heat. When I see this, I probably think the same thing everyone else does, “Poor bastards; man I’m glad that’s not me.” And for me, I always follow that up with, “What the hell would I do if I were to break down out here in the middle of nowhere? I wouldn't know where to begin."

So you can imagine my utter terror when I felt the truck jerking spastically up a hill and I looked at the dash to see the engine light flashing angrily. By the time I came to a stop, steam was flowing profusely out from under the hood. Will had mentioned something about a coolant leak before he left for Chicago—maybe this is what he meant. I looked around in all directions at the long straight highway and at the unending stretch of Mexican wilderness. Not forest, not desert, just miles of semi-arid terrain, replete with red clay, scrubby trees, cactus, and giant flat mesas in the distance. What I didn’t see was any signs of civilization. FUCK ME. Ale is going to kill me if I die out here and do not make it to the birth of our first son. I suppose I could hitch-hike, but that has its downside in Northern Mexico, where the Narco-traffickers’ second favorite pastime after beheading each other and the police over drug business is kidnapping people who they think have money—like gringos stranded on the side of the road. Or I could try to walk to somewhere across the vast plains, but would I be eaten by wolves or just die of exposure?

OK, so I was overreacting. Just a little. I had seen some signs a while back indicating a call box for highway assistance. I called Ale and told her I was going to wait for the truck to cool down then drive slowly to the next call box station. “That thing is not going to work!” she scolded. “This is Mexico!” But, I had to try. And though the line was slightly garbled, it did work. And get this: a guy in a brand new service truck showed up in less than two minutes and began filling my radiator with water. For free. No lie. I’d like to see you find that sort of service in the U.S.

Salvation. This was going to be a breeze! This elation lasted until I started the car and watched the water flowed out of the bottom of the engine like Niagara Falls. It was obvious that the water pump had died in the heat of the drive.

Now, let me say a word about my communication skills in situations like this. Since I speak English all day at work, all evening at home with my bi-lingual wife, and all weekends with my English speaking gringo and/or bi-lingual Mexican friends—I rarely speak the Spanish outside of ordering food, buying stuff and ordering taxi drivers around. I rarely “have to” speak Spanish, so I usually don’t. (Trust me, I loath myself for this laziness.) Generally speaking, I can make myself generally understood in a multitude of situations. But, what I have trouble with is understanding people who speak quickly, with poor diction, and in colloquial phrases and expressions not found in a Spanish textbook or in technical language unfamiliar to me—which is to say, the way a highway service truck driver talks. So, after we figure out that water isn’t going to fix this problem, he starts laying out my options while I try to follow. What I basically understood was that I had two choices—well, three, if you count dying of exposure—but he was explaining two: 1) call and wait some significant amount of time for a tow truck to take me to Aguascalientes, the next town up the highway, or 2) Let him bumper-push me there. The road service was free, since it is part of the benefits you get from paying the ridiculously high road toll fares in Mexico-the other benefit being not having to dodge giant car-swallowing pot holes. At this moment I realized I would never complain about the toll costs again. Still, I couldn’t quite make out whether the tow would be included or would cost extra. But, before I clarified any further, I quickly decided on the bumper push. The jeep was in pretty good physical shape, except for a slightly bent bumper in the back, so it wouldn’t hurt anything. Shit, maybe this would event help bang it back into place. But, more importantly, I had to get to Aguascalientes in time to find a mechanic who was still open. It was already 6:30 pm.

The bumper push ride was weird, I’ll admit. I felt retarded, like I was pretending to drive down the highway in a soapbox go cart without an engine. And it felt wrong. No way would they ever let a truck bumper-push another car down the right hand lane of a four lane interstate highway for 20 kilometers, complete with tractor trailers passing in the left lane at 80+ miles an hour. (I felt less stupid about how I must have looked when on the way back from Torreon, I witnessed an old beat up pick-up truck from the 70's, with six people in the front and a horse standing tied in the bed, being pushed in the same fashion.) I say 20 kilometers because that’s the best estimate I came up with as we drove—as he drove and I coasted—toward Aguascalientes. Soon after we got started, I saw a sign that said, Aguascalientes, 15 kilometers. Some quick math in my head told me that was about nine miles. Not too close, but not too far. After well over five minutes of being pushed at around 30-40 mph, I figured I must be less than ten kilometers away, making good progress. Until I saw a second sign, Aguascalientes: 14 kilometers. Gotta love Mexico. Once on a trip with Jim Weathers and friends we passed a sign that said: Pachuca 74 kilometers; then in less than a minute later saw another reading, Pachuca 57 kilometers. We all laughed knowing we had just passed through a Mexican time warp.

By the time I was shoved unceremoniously off the highway onto a road within the Aguascalientes city limits, it was after 7 pm. After he gave me directions on where to find some mechanic shops, I offered him 60 Pesos to which he made a sincere an honest gesture of “thanks, but that’s not necessary.” He made it clear once again that the help was free, and I made it clear to him that it was my pleasure to tip him.

I located a strip lined with ratty looking mechanic shops on the outskirts of town, identified by the often hand painted signs on the cement walls. As I drove past I saw, Closed… Closed…Closed. Then, Open—but with three cars in front with their hoods up. Great. This guy was the only one open and he was already busy. If I was going to get this problem solved immediately, he was going to ass rape me for it for sure. Or not. The guy was actually really nice and spoke some passable English. I told him I needed to be in Torreon the next day for my son’s scheduled birth and therefore really needed this repair completed that evening. After he had some discussion with the other guy working there they said they could have it done by 10 pm, but warned against driving out onto the highway that night. After my brief panic on the side of the road, I knew what he was talking about. I’d test drive it that night to make sure the repair had done its job and head out in the morning light. Which is exactly what I did. The repairs went off without a hitch, I picked it up by 10:30 and paid 150 bucks. I’m not sure what it would have cost if I didn’t need a rush job, or if I was able to seek competitive prices from other places, but given the circumstances, it all seemed to be worth it. The mechanic directed me to a very decent hotel for 25 dollars a night and I passed the time waiting for the Jeep by walking around the center of Aguascalientes. It was OK, but nothing too special. Most importantly, when I drove around town for about 30 minutes after I picked up the Jeep (I think the shemale hookers thought I was actually on the prowl) there were no signs of overheating. I was good to go.

The next morning things got off to an auspicious start when outside the hotel I saw a taco stand already open at 9am. I love many, many things about Mexico, and the tacos are definitely up there with the best of the rest at the top of the list. I had three tacos of various types of pork and a fresh squeezed orange juice before I hopped on the freeway and headed north. The further north I drove the more isolated the highway became. This was classic Mexican northern desert terrain. Complete with cacti, rocks, mountains and sky—and little else. I suddenly realized how lucky I was to have broken down where I did the day before. THIS was barren middle-of-no-where. And another thing had changed; I was no longer on a nice toll highway with road service. Break down here and there's not service truck to the rescue. Plus, instead of two lanes heading in each direction in true highway fashion, the road had become two single lanes in opposing directions--with a twist. Each lane had a half a shoulder on each side. When I say half a shoulder I mean just that. There was a dotted line with half a lane on each side of the lane. And beyond that, was a significant drop-off or a ditch. Like much of driving in central Mexico, many parts of the road are often steeply uphill, and many of the cars and trucks are slow, so it is necessary for cars to be able to pass in order to avoid long back-ups of traffic. But, on a simple two lane highway, how can this be done?

Well, in Mexico, it’s done by having the slow cars on both sides of the highway sliding over onto the half-a-shoulder so that a third lane is created in the middle of the road for the passing cars. Pretty ingenious, if this is all the flat road surface with which you have to work. I suppose. (Of course, on the other hand, if you’re going to go to the trouble of building a highway across a mountainous desert, why not go all the way and build four lanes?) So, for the next 150 miles I was passing cars and trucks down this improvised middle lane at 80 miles an hour. This may sound simple enough, but understand that it is a delicate dance that only works if all the dancers are aware of each other and dancing together. If everyone isn’t paying close attention, it can quickly turn into a frightening game of head-on chicken. There were times when I was leisurely scoping out the harsh, but beautiful, landscape when I realized that the oncoming traffic was in a middle lane passing situation, one vehicle half way on the side of the road and the other screaming directly at the front end of my car. Luckily, I always managed to notice this before the deadly, inevitable contact. Or, there were other times when I was passing a slow moving truck in front of me, hoping and praying that the oncoming driver realized he needed to get on the half-shoulder before we sent each other into a fiery inferno. Luckily, they did. Perhaps the worst was passing agiant semi with another 18 wheeler coming the other way. It was like the “you’re going the wrong way” scene from Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Seriously scary shit.

So, I managed to avoid a catastrophic head-on collision and arrived in Torreon by mid afternoon. By 9 pm Ale and I were settled into our maternity suite, which consisted of surprisingly nice digs. Sort of a clean Best Western feel. While she filled out paperwork and got some tests done and an IV inserted, I headed over to the mall next door to get something to eat.

In between the hospital and the mall was the Terraza Garibaldi restaurant (sort of a Mexican Fridays of sorts, with music blaring 1oxs louder). While I stopped to inquire about the food, I also told him about my impending fatherly status. “Felicidades Cabron!” he congratulated me before telling me they didn’t do food to go. So, I headed into the adjoining mall to get some fast food. Just my luck, everything was already closed. When I explained this to the host on the way back to the hospital, he told me to wait while he talked to the manager. I can only suppose he told him I was at the hospital next door awaiting the birth of my first son, because all of a sudden I was being given the VIP treatment. They didn’t allow people to sit at the bar, but they grabbed a chair from a reserved table and set me up there with a beer and a shot of tequila that the manager made a big show of saying was on the house. I ordered some food and began watching the music videos on the large screens throughout the restaurant, while I sipped by beer and tequilia. The place was totally packed, and the food was taking quite a while, so I ordered a couple more shots of tequilia as I waited. Then something strange began happening. The waiters in the joint were literally falling all over themselves trying to serve me. Sometimes pushing each other out of the way to stand in front of me. "Pick me to wait on you," they seemed to be saying, though it was hard to hear anything with the music blaring. Apparently, they had misinterpreted the managers actions to mean I was someone rich or important. They were clearly unaware that I was just an average guy. And they also did not understand that I was waiting on food to go because they kept coming over and trying to set up a placemat and diningware for me. I literally had to tell five different waiters that I dind’t need their help, as they groveled for a chance to serve me. I could tell that people were watching this and wondering who I was and what was going on. It was a bit surreal to say the least. The buzz I took back to the hotel was just enough to get me to sleep without too much tossing and turning on the not-so-great bed the night before the big day.

The next morning came soon enough and we headed down into the OR for the big event. Ale went in before me and as I was filling out the paper work to be allowed into the surgery, the woman asked me who the doctor was performing the operation. Umm… “Ale’s cousin,"--all I knew at that point,--was probably not going to be enough information. Then somehow my feeble brain remembered her first name, “Marcela!" I said proudly. She gave me a blank stare. When she realized I had nothing else to offer, she asked another woman who stood nearby if she knew a doctor Marcela something, and she replied, “That's Dr. Almaguer.” Just as she was finally getting the answer she needed, this really hot chick came walking down the hall, big black Mexican eyes, bright smile, shapely legs supported by bright turquois-blue high heals that matched her blouse, earings and hairband. I’m doctor Almaguer!” she said, turning toward me, immediately recognizing me the gringo husband she'd heard about. Jesus, I thought, this is the doctor!? Ale told me she was cute, but this was over the top. Thank god she would be covered during the C-section from head to toe with surgical attire or this hot doc would be distracting me in the worst possible way at the worst possible time. Ale’s pretty tolerant about me appreciating women out in the world, but I’m fairly certain that ogling another woman while your wife is giving birth to your son is a absolute and unforgiveable no-no.

Actually, technically speaking, sexy Doctor Marcela was not covered from head to toe—her surgical mask covered only her mouth, leaving her nose exposed. Now, I don’t know much of anything about how to do surgery on pregnant women, but I’m pretty sure that for surgical masks to be effective, they need to be covering both the mouth and the nose. I was also pretty confident that this well dressed and beautiful doctor did not have any serious communicable diseases—you know, like tuberculosis or malaria—but it was the principle of the matter that bugged me. God forbid she sneezed some common cold germs into the open cavern before her, the one containing my wife’s exposed entrails, or into the very first breath of my emerging three kilogram son. I’ll admit, this actually bugged me quite a bit. But, the fact that she was doing this surgergy for free prevented me from saying anything. That, and the fact that my focus was on getting Ale through this traumatic experience as best I could.

As described at the beginning of this narrative, the birth of my son was all somewhat surreal: Harry Potter, comedic doctors, Saving Private Ryan, oblivious Ale, and then they yanked this little naked man from my wife’s stomach. Guero, ("whitey") she said matter of factly as they pulled him up by his ankles--though he looked quite purple to me at that moment. And even though I “knew” that she was pregnant and I had watched her stomach had grow tremendously over the months, it was almost a surprise to see him appear like that. Holy shit! There really IS a baby in there! He wasn’t in front of us for long, the pediatrician gave Ale and I a quick look-see and quickly carted him off to an unseen room in the back.

And then it began. The worrying. Welcome to the worrying. We were parents for all of five minutes and already we were racked with concern. Why did they take him so quickly? Is he OK? What are they doing to him back there? What debilitating and expensive disorder had they discovered? Before Ale was done being sewed up, she demanded I go and check on our son. When I got back there, they doctor was busy jamming a suction probe up his nose and down his throat. “Look” he said reassuringly in broken English, “Five toes and five hands.” Yeah, pal, I get the point; but even as he lifted the tiny hands for me to see I was almost afraid to look—what if he actually did have six fingers and eight toes, or any number of other problems? Ugh.

We spent the next few days watching TV, reading a baby book, allowing Ale to recover from surgery, and waiting for the nurses to drop Miguelito off to us for various stints before taking him back for tests and check-ups. On the third night, they gave him to us for keeps, or so we thought. The next morning, Miguelito recieved a final check-up while we packed. Then, as were waiting for them to hand him over for the last time, they announced that his bilirubin count had jumped from 6 to 10 over the last two days. He was turning yellow with jaundice (which his inexperienced and obviously terrible parents had failed to notice) and he would require another 24 hours in the hospital receiving “photo therapy.” This is a fancy way of saying he needed to lay in a baby tanning bed for a while. He looked pretty weird laid out in all his scrawny glory wearing a pair of eye covers attached to his face with Frankenstein bolt-like Velcro buttons glued to his temples. Before we left the hospital we jumped on the internet and Googled bilirubin, finding to our horror that this relatively normal condition, if extreme, could cause brain damage. BRAIN DAMAGE!? So, the worrying rocketed to a new level. Ale and I were racked with dispair as we headed home from the hospital without our beloved newborn son. That night, Ale’s mother mercifully bought me a bottle of Jack Daniels so I could take the edge of my hysteria and get to sleep. (Have I mentioned that I LOVE my mother-in-law?)

The following day Miguelito was released from the hospital, his photo therapy had brought his bilirubin count down a bit to eight. Apparently the light rays make it easier to break down these naturally produced toxins and get them out of his system through his natural bowel movements. The cause of the problem was the incompatibility of blood types between him and his mother. We learned that, other than exposing him to sunlight, one way to get him to pass these natural toxins is to get him eating lots of breast milk, a natural laxative, and in turn, getting him to shit out these toxins more quickly. So, when we took him home the next day, our immediate concern was getting him sufficient breast milk to cause him regular bowel movements. Problem was, Ale was not yet producing much milk. In fact, she wasn’t yet producing any actual leche at all, only the pre-milk substance called colostrum that precedes milk for several days when mothers are breast feeding. And to make matters worse, this milk is further delayed in women who have Caesarian births. Ugh, again.

So, for the next few days most of our worry revolved around getting our beautiful and perfect child to suckle frequently at the magnificent and enormous breasts of his mother. This was done with limited success, so we needed to supplement his feeding with formula from a bottle. But, the frequent crapping, so famous among the lore of newborns, and the salvation from brain damage that this crapping would bring, remained elusive. A couple of rabbit-like pellets here, some greenish skid-marks there, but no quality dumps. And so, our parental fretting grew. We were sunbathing Miguelito in indirect sun throughout the day in order to help his body process these nasty bilirubins, but he needed to start evacuating his tiny bowels regularly in order to fully ensure he would not be brain damaged and grow into some sort of demented serial killer. Or worse yet, a Dallas Cowboys or Boston Redsocks fan. The stakes were high. So, when two days later, we woke at 2 am to find a mound of squishy shit in his diaper, Ale and I rejoiced over this blessing from the gods. “Yay!!,” we literally screamed as we high-fived each other. And then it hit me like a ton of…shit. People had been telling me that being a parent was going to “change my life in ways that I could not imagine.” Suddenly, I knew what they meant. Here I was, 43 years old, a well educated professional, successful teacher, part time musician, frequent world traveler, lover of good food, drink, movies, music, etc., and the thing that was bringing me a joy beyond all possible comprehension was a pile of steaming poo in my son’s diaper. Yeah, I’d say things have changed.

Days later, we would visit the pediatrician again to learn, despite all our fears and paranoia, that our son was as healthy and normal as any parent could expect. Miguel Alberto Hennessy Diaz Alvarado was doing just fine, even if his mother and father are in for a lifetime of more worry and anxiety. But, especially a lifetime of love!

Travel in the Time of Swine Flu

So, you’ve heard the reports, you’ve seen the pictures, you’ve pondered the horror—now, a first hand account from a survivor of Swine Flu at viral ground zero: Mexico City.

Of course, it came out of nowhere, as most global catastrophe’s do. It started on Thursday night, just as I was getting into bed. The gospel music on my phone which indicates a new text message began playing. Who could be texting me at 11:30 at night? It was from Tina, and it read: NO SCHOOL TOMORROW BECAUSE OF THE FLU. THIS IS NOT A JOKE. To which I immediately thought: THIS MUST BE SOME KIND OF JOKE! As tantalizing as an unexpected day off from work sounded, I wasn’t about to turn my 6 am alarm off. Then I got a second, very similar, text from Jacky. OK—something is up. But what, a conspiracy to make Miguelito miss work—or something much more sinister? I was too tired to figure it out, so I went to bed.

I still left the alarm on, but decided I would check the website first thing in the morning after it went off. And, low and behold, there was the announcement that school would be closed until further notice due to something called “swine flu.” After checking out more news on the internet it became clear that we were in deep pig shit. A new, virulent, contagious and deadly flu, a mixture of pig-bird-human viruses, was spreading throughout Mexico City like the spirit of death during the Passover in Egypt. A real Hot Zone/Outbreak moment had arrived and we were right in the middle of it.

Fortunately, we were already scheduled to get out of town that weekend for Ale’s brother’s wedding in Torreon, so we gladly jumped on a plane that afternoon and left the deadly virus behind. When we arrived in Torreon, there was (surprisingly) no screening from anyone at the airport but plenty of questions from our family. Already, reports had circulated indicating over fifty fatalities. Luckily for us, they weren’t scared enough to want to quarantine us, they took us home for dinner before dropping us at the hotel.

Now I know I’ve shared with you many times before the many fun and quirky things about living in Latin America. It’s what keeps things “interesting” and me on my toes. So, just a quickie: One of the reasons we booked the hotel was that it had a pool. Torreon lies in the state of Coahuila, in the desert of northern Mexico, which is “hot as hell”—to use a technical meteorological term—meaning “really fucking hot.” So, when I saw the alberca cerrada, “pool closed” sign on the pool door I grew concerned. Torreon is not what you would call a bastion of high culture, unless you consider highly air-conditioned large malls and fast food establishments “high culture.” This town is only about a hundred years old and lacks the colonial plaza and architecture that serves as the main attraction in so many Mexican cities and towns. Being able to sit by the pool, dipping, snoozing and reading was supposed to be a highlight of my weekend. “Hey, is this pool going to be working tomorrow?” I asked. “Umm….let me check…uh, yeah, it will be ready by 10am tomorrow.” But, of course, when I went down the next day to take a swim before I had to get ready for the wedding, I was informed that the pool would be available sometime Monday. They always tell you what you want to hear, rather than deal with a problem

The wedding was in a really cute chapel, and went as well as a Catholic Mass/wedding can go; which is to say I didn’t slit my wrist from listening to a gay guy in a glittery frock giving out wedding advice in a language I barely understand. Since we stayed late taking pictures, then went home to change, we (Ale, her sister and her son Dario, and a friend) finally arrived after all the tables were filled and the food served. So much for the idea of a family table. We managed to get them to set up another table and enjoyed some tasty Mexican staples, including tacos with various fillings and Mexican-style rice. Not exactly your gringo first-choice of wedding fare, but better than many a wedding buffet I’ve endured.

It was indeed “hot as hell” on this Saturday afternoon in Torreon, so I did my best to keep under the shade of the tents, avoided being sucked onto the dance floor for too long at a time and visited the two enormous industrial fan/misters frequently. Despite the heat and the setting—which was sort of a swim club recreation center—it turned into a pretty good party as the sun and the temperatures faded. And true to form, Ale’s parents and their merry group of party friends made sure it lasted to the very end—and beyond. They had brought several bottles of whiskey, vodka and tequila which they drank along with the beer being served by the wait staff. When that ran out I went on a beer run to keep them going. When that ran out, we left the wedding reception (the very last ones to go, I assure you) and headed over to one of their houses to play guitar and drink, eat and smoke some more. Honestly—I couldn’t keep up. After being served a triple sized shot of tequila (and finishing it, OF COURSE) I begged off and went back to the hotel, begrudgingly admitting defeat at the hands of my 6O+ year old in-laws and their bohemian fifty-something friends. Once there, Ale and I split a humongous Carl’s Jr burger and double sized michelada (spicey/Cubana style) we had delivered, before passing out.

It was at the wedding reception that I recieved word that all Mexican schools would be closed for another week and a half. Really!? Cases of the flu continued to rise and now it was showing up in the U.S. WTF was going on? I mean, so far it all seemed unreal and probably overblown, but now I was starting to wonder. Should we even return to the DF? Especially Ale, who was pregnant, and unable to take antibiotics. Hmmm. An obvious choice? Well, this should give you a pretty good idea of how boring Torreon is—when presented with the question of whether or not she should stay—she decided to take her chances in the DF. So, we donned our surgical masks and headed home.

By the time we arrived almost every person in the city was wearing a mask. Though, sadly, many people seemed unclear on how they were supposed to protect them from the virus. For example, some people wore the masks only over their mouth but left their nose exposed. Others wore the mask, only to take if off to be better understood when speaking to others. I saw some who wore the mask in their cars—while riding alone. They didn’t seem to get that the virus was spread in bits of saliva breathed, coughed or sneezed out into the air you breath or onto surfaces you might touch and put into your eyes or mouth. Clearly, not covering both your mouth and nose at all times in public was as good as not wearing the mask at all. And wearing a mask alone was protecting from only yourself, who either already had the flu or not. Duh!

Even though I still suffer from the knee-jerk reaction of immediately loving the idea of unexpected day off (snow day! in NJ), ultimately I am a slave-driving-content-obsessed teacher who wants my kids to learn as much stuff as possible. So, my concerns shifted to school, where I headed on Monday to gather some work and get myself organized for the week and a half off. There too was Will, Marlowe, and Ryan Davidson, who were doing the same. Just as we were getting ready to leave a loud and wailing siren kicked off--?????????. Oh, right, of course, an earthquake. Well, never a dull moment! Later that day I watched the American newscasters report about our day in Mexico City: deadly flu + earthquake. My mother must have been beside herself…

Though Ale was content to work from the safety of our apartment, I knew I’d go stir crazy under those conditions. I was already sick of wearing the annoying mask every time I went outside for fear of bringing the deadly virus home to my wife and unborn kid. When Jim Weathers suggested a trip north to Hidalgo to explore some towns and forests he’d heard about up there, I jumped at the chance to get out of town again.

We hit the road with Jim’s girlfriend Laura and his friend/surrogate Mexican mom, Terri. Heading due north up Insurgentes (the longest avenue in the city, and, some claim, in the world) to the state of Hidalgo which none of us knew much about. We had heard about some little towns with cabanas nearby in natural settings. After being unimpressed with Pachuca, the state capital, we headed into the mountains to discover some quiet colonial, former mining towns. The drive through this region was quite nice. At Mineral del Monte we took the Turibus around the town to the old mines and the graveyard. The graveyard was still reserved for only the Cornish miners who originally worked the mines in the region and their descendants. It really was a lovely little town, but most of it was closed due to the flu. After moving on to even smaller towns and hamlets we did come across some cabana places that looked OK, but we were having trouble finding places that were open. According to them, they had all been shut down by the government as part of the “flu contingency.” We found a couple that were willing to rent to us if we would agree to hide our car around back. OK—fine then, let’s negotiate. You’ve got no business and we don’t want to pay your inflated prices, so let’s talk. Nope. Not a chance. Jim and I moved on, shaking our heads at the apparent lack of business sense.

After driving deep into the forest we came upon a very isolated place that featured ATV rentals and a trout fishing pond next door. These simple, but new/clean, cabins sat on the side of a hill, overlooking a field with sheep. This was perfect—except they too had been told to shut down. Well, with darkness descending we pressed hard for an exception, but our failed negotiations at lowering the price were no longer an obstacle. 900 pesos for the night, as I recall, which was 225 pesos each (about 20 bucks) for a two room cabin in a pristine setting. Not cheap, but not bad.

So, we enjoyed ourselves on the balcony, made some fires, played the guitar and had some beers. We headed into the little colonial town we’d passed through the night before and found one place open for breakfast. Already we were seeing large government produced signs explaining the dangers of this swine flu or “flu porcina” and the many ways to avoid contracting it.

After breakfast we walked around town before moving on to the Chico national forest. Surely the forest is open enough to be open during the pig plague. Guess again. They wouldn’t even let us in the ranger station to get a map or info. So we followed the road straight through the other side of the park where we found another tiny, but extremely charming colonial town, Mineral del Chico. Once again, the flu emergency dominated the experience. Most places closed, barely anyone out and about, and those who were wearing masks and gloves, signs warning of infection everywhere. And this was in the middle of nowhere, we thought, what chaos must be unfolding back in Mexico City? We discussed potential scenarios upon our return that might reflect movies like 28 Days Later, Siolent Green, Escape From New York or Omega Man/I am Legend.

After a walking tour of the town, where we saw signs advertising zip lining and rappelling, we headed up the mountain to find another “campground” featuring cozy cabins. This place, perched on the side of the mountain and sporting an amazing view of the Mineral del Chico in the valley below, boasted hiking trails, communal outdoor grills, picnic tables and paint ball. Awesome! (We are definitely going back to this place with more friends during the next school year.) We got ourselves set up in the cabin and then headed back into town to try to find a restaurant. After all, we had not eaten since breakfast and it was getting late.

Good luck. There were only three restaurants we could locate in this little weekend-home village, and they were all closed. The more we drove around looking for something, the more desperate to find something we became. Just as we were about to settle for crackers from the convenience store, we passed a place that we had seen earlier with a sign saying, solo para llevar, or “take out only.” But, now there was no sign at all and not even a window for us to peer through. Was it even a restaurant? With nothing to lose from knocking on the door, we sent Laura and Terri to do just that. Lo and behold a man answered, first saying they were indeed a restaurant, but that they too were closed. But, they could see people eating inside, so they turned on the charm and sob story, managing to talk our way into this secret refuge of fine food. An underground restaurant! Terri and Laura went in the restaurant while Tim and I parked the car, only to be faced with a dilemma—lock the car and secure the computer and other belongings, or leave the windows down (and doors unlocked) and ensure Toby, Terri’s pug didn’t die from the heat. Tim, being the good friend he is, chose his computer and guitar, leaving Toby to fend for himself. Good luck, little buddy!

(This last for all of about five minutes before he leapt up from the table with a change of heart and rushed to Toby’s rescue.)

The chef/owner was somewhat disheveled, but friendly and warm, even going out into the garden to pick spinach for our salad. We had trout, the house dish plus chiles en nogada, the current special (and a MUST have Mexican dish if you visit). Both were fantastic and we stayed there until dusk, enjoying the view out the back of the restaurant into a lovely garden and the tequila the owner brought over to our table. As the Tequila flowed, so did the Espanglish and the laughter. We had gone from hungry and desperate for anything to the equivalent of a home cooked meal at a friend’s house. A feeling of rightness in the world came over me like…well, like a Tequila buzz, I suppose. We spent a second evening enjoying the smells and sounds of the Mexican outdoors while drinking and singing some more in the mountain air. Then we headed home the next morning. What we would find upon our arrival at ground zero was anyone’s guess.

After three days in the forest with Jimmy and crew I arrived back home to find a city that was noticeably dead. By order of the government, restaurants were shut down, along with futball matches, plays, concerts, museums and most anything else that involved more than ten people in one place. Hordes had fled to less infected parts of the country. The city was like the Morrissey song—Every Day is Like Sunday—since Sunday is the one day each week the city isn’t completely frantic. I could finish unpacking, Ale told me to get ready to go to San Miguel Allende to visit our friends Sonia and Enrique, and their magic baby Mila who never cries. She was tired of being cooped up. Fine with me, this place was becoming a creepy ghost town. Any minute now the flu zombies would begin staggering down the street looking to devour our flesh. Time to leave again…

So we loaded up the truck Will had left to us—his escape from the viral killer led him all the way to Budapest—and took the 3 hour or so ride out to San Miguel, in the state of Guanajuato. I had been there before when Ale and I went for our first ever weekend date during the Grito, the Mexican Independence celebration. It’s a pretty big deal there since the Mexican revolt against Spain began in Guanajuato, in a nearby town. San Miguel de Allende is named after an early leader of the independence movement, Ignacio Allende, who had some early success against the royal forces, but was later captured, executed by firing squad and beheaded. The town is also interesting because the art school there accepted GI scholarships after WWII, making it a haven for both ex-pat Americans and artists alike. Today it is as well preserved a Mexican colonial town as you can find, filled with boutiques, restaurants, bed and breakfasts, and lots of retired Americans, visiting or living there. I’d say it’s a must stop for anyone traveling through central Mexico.

Enrique and Sonia, who live near us in Mexico City, had rented an apartment in San Miguel while Enrique laid low after the company he was working for, Stanford Funds, turned out to be running an international Ponzi scheme that rivaled Bernie Madoff’s. He had worked there for years without a clue, taking orders, sending them off to the banks in the Caribbean, distributing dividends, etc. He had a nice office in one of the best buildings in the city. He had even broken a personal rule of his and invited his friends and family to invest in this amazingly “solid company.” And then, he found out his boss was a crook the same way everyone else did, by hearing about it on the news. Some of his co-workers had been “quarantined” as official witnesses, so he headed to San Miguel in order to avoid such an experience, since it likely meant being slapped around by the police in a motel until you paid enough for better treatment. Ah, Mexico!

As this town is a major tourist attraction, it was not “shut down” like the places I’d just been to in Hidalgo, but there were still plenty of surgical masks about, and restaurants were making you wash your hands before entering. We had several different dining experiences there. The first was at El Pollo Feliz, a chicken chain with a party attitude. You could order chicken, fries and tortillas (of course) along with a salad bar. The place is plastered with adverts featuring their “happy chicken” character in the role of famous movies or icons, like The Godfather or even popular commercials in Mexico. It was cheap and tasty and we went there twice. Ale and I also hit an Italian-Argentinean restaurant nestled in a beautiful outdoor garden setting on one of our walkabouts. The third place, Harry’s, was first rate, a New Orleans styled place downtown, expensive but excellent. During the meantime we enjoyed our days playing with Mila who was just starting to learn to crawl when she wasn’t sitting around cooing and smiling. I also spent a fair amount of time on the computer, conducting “remote learning” with my students online.

After our dinner at Harry’s, Enrique, who was going a bit stir crazy in this quaint, sleepy town, decided it was time to take me out to the pelodromo, or “hair circus”—an old school name for strip clubs. I pointed out to him that today, with all the designer shaving going on, it should be now called the pielodromo, or “skin circus”. Either way, he was bent for some action, and I wasn’t going to stand in his way, so we dropped the ladies off at the apartment and headed out on the prowl. (Yes, the wives knew what we were up to and let us have our fun—one of the benefits of marrying a Mexican woman.) Prowling, however, is all we ended up doing. There would be no howling as it were, being a Monday night in a provincial town during a flu epidemic. After driving around chasing the directions several people had given us and finding only darkened buildings on the edge of town, we realized it was not going to happen. We had a couple drinks at Berlin, a hole in the wall bar we found open in town and went home to drink for cheap. We tried to sell a wild night story to the girls but they were somehow on to us and laughed at us for coming up empty handed. Finally, I was pissed. I had been willing to suffer a number of inconveniences from this flu epidemic, but when it started to interfere with my strip clubbing—now things had gone too far!

The next evening, Ale and I packed up our belongings and headed back to the DF. I was scheduled to get back to work the next day, I wondered how many of my students would show up. Many had been shuttled out of the country to some U.S. relative’s or vacation spot. Surprisingly, attendance was nearly full and about 70% had completed their online assignments. We spent the next two weeks having our temperature checked and washing our hands upon entering the campus, but other than that things were pretty much back to normal. In the end, our ability to demonstrate that significant “remote learning” had taken place during the flu contingency exempted us from having to extend the school year for two more weeks as many of the Mexican public schools had to do. And THAT would have really pissed me off.

As it turned out, the monstrous flu porcina virus, initially thought to be exceptionally virulent and contagious, was mostly just another strain of flu in a world full of influenza. The deaths attributed to the swine flu were re-estimated to be lower than first thought. New cases steadily declined in Mexico, while they continued to increase in other countries. It seemed the prudent (some said drastic) measures taken by the government were appropriate and kept things from getting out of control, nipping it in the bud. Better safe than sorry, right? And besides, it gave Miguelito the opportunity to get out and explore more of Mexico, which is always a good thing.

You can read this, and other amazing blogs, in a snazzier format at miguelitoinmexico.blogspot.com. You can also view photos related to this blog at flickr.com/miguelito2066.

Miguelito in...Nicaragua? or The Worst Vacation Ever or Lessons I (re)learned about My Wife, Traveling and Nicaragua

I’ve always loved traveling and make a point to take advantage of time off from work to get away to some place new. As Spring Break approached, I had my eyes set on Cuba. As an American, Cuba is not only a Caribbean island destination; it’s also a mysterious forbidden zone. While most Americans know that U.S. (ridiculously outdated) policy forbids Americans to travel to Cuba directly, many Americans fail to realize that the rest of the world visits Cuba all the time. And many Americans do so by way of other countries. Several of my American friends here have been there for vacations and have loved it. (I won’t mention their names as there is supposedly a ten thousand dollar fine from the U.S. government.) I believe it is only a matter of time before the Castro regime is a thing of the past and Cuba will become a popular Caribbean tourist destination for Americans, perhaps the most popular. But, I would like to get there before that happens, to see for myself what life is like there. The people I know who have been have had very good things to say about it, despite the obvious limitations of its current government. It was definitely my first choice for this vacation.

Unfortunately, Ale did not share my desire to spend Spring Break in Cuba. But not because she doesn’t think it would be fun. One of her good friends loves all things Cuban and visits frequently. The problem was that she thinks visiting Cuba would be too much fun. Being pregnant, she said she couldn’t bare the thought of having to take it easy there, missing out on the mojitos and late night clubbing, going to bed early while I wandered the streets filled with hot Cuban women for hire. I tried to tell her that we could make a nice time of taking easy days on the beach and spending our evenings eating fresh seafood listening to live Cuban music, but she said she didn’t feel like being seen in a bathing suit in her bloated condition. I reminded her about the “pregnant glow” concept and assured her no one in his right mind would judge a pregnant woman in a bathing suit. But, she wouldn’t hear it. So, Cuba was a no-go.

The other option I was promoting was Guatemala. Semana Santa (Easter Holy Week) in Antigua Guatemala is an experience you can find nowhere else. The colored Alfombras (“carpet” art on the streets made of grains, flowers, leaves and colored sawdust) and the many Easter passion processionals complete with floats, bands and “Roman soldiers” are some of the most elaborate in Latin America. I’ve been to Guatemala twice, once during Semana Santa, and loved it so much that I wanted to show it to Ale. We also had some friends, Kristen and Jordan, going there that week and I figured we could meet up with them for part of the time. But, Ale wasn’t interested. She kept complaining, “but you’ve already been there.” Additionally, the rest of my plan included a boat ride down the river to the Caribbean-Black town of Livingston, requiring significant time on a Guatemalan bus on Guatemalan roads. In her pregnant state, she wasn’t game for hot, crowded busses on bumpy roads. And just like that, Guatemala was kaput.

Her counter-offer, an all inclusive eco-resort in Panama looked OK; but for me, being in the same hotel all week seemed limiting. And the prices for the eco-activities associated with the resort seemed really expensive. And besides all that, I was worried the temperatures would be too severe. I had spent a Spring Break in Costa Rica just north of Panama once and it had been murderously hot. Painfully hot. Cry-out-loud-it’s-so-hot hot. So I couldn’t get on board with her idea either. We briefly discussed a variety of other options but could not come to any consensus. It wasn’t like we were arguing or anything; we just could not come to a meeting of the minds.

So with only a week before the break, we were still undecided. Everyone at work was telling me of their travel plans and asking me about mine. “Don’t know yet,” I would tell them as they shot me a look of surprise. As I lay in bed surfing the internet for info and ideas that week, I came across the blog of someone who had traveled extensively in Central America. He spoke about a country that was safer and cheaper than Guatemala these days, and filled with undiscovered potential: Nicaragua. I surfed some more, looked at some photos and did some quick reading; and as Ale slept next to me without a clue, I booked two tickets to Nicaragua and was done with it. Problem solved. Vacation booked. Sure it was impulsive; sure it was risky; but I figured Nicaragua was off the beaten path enough as to have the allure of the exotic and new. You know, adventure and discovery. Sometimes going with your gut can really pay off. And sometimes, well… not so much.

I decided not to tell Ale where we were going until we were at the airport. And get this—when I said, “OK where do you think we are going?”—she lights up, smiles and says hopefully, “Cuba!??” I was like, OMG! I could have booked us to Cuba and she would have been fine with it. But, deep inside I already knew that. Why didn’t I just book it? When I told her “Nicaragua” she was… well, let’s just say she was not overjoyed. She was more like, perplexed. “Ahhhh, hmmmm, yeah…Ni-ca-ra-gua, Okaaayyy...” Ugh.

Which leads me to the first lesson I (re)learned about my wife: Ale sometimes doesn’t really know what she’s talking about. Which means to say, sometimes she doesn’t really mean what she says. I know this. Sometimes she likes to be contrary. Sometimes she’s just not thinking things through. So, I need to get past that and somehow get her to let go of her contention when I sort of know that we are probably closer on an issue than it seems. Or, in this case, I probably should have just grabbed the bull by the horns and chosen Cuba, which I pretty much knew, in the end, she would have enjoyed. But, nope, she had originally said no to Cuba, so I respected that, and now we were heading to Nicaragua.

Minutes after this revelation, I (re)learned my next lesson from this trip, which had to do with baggage: If you have a connecting flight, especially if your layover time is short, it is best NOT to check your luggage. I already knew such an obvious thing, but I was not really in my right mind when I made the decision to check our largest piece of carry-on luggage. First of all, I was still reeling from the realization that if I had booked tickets to Cuba, Ale would have been happy with that. Plus, for some reason she was adamant about checking the bag. As some of you married men out there may understand, whenever possible, it’s best to let your wife have her way. This philosophy makes life really enjoyable. However, there are times you should put your foot down and not let your wife have her way. Like, when she wants to check your bag and you have a 50 minute changeover in an airport in El Salvador and you’re transferring between Mexican and Central American airlines. Wow. As I type that it sounds really stupid that I listened to her and checked that bag. But, as I said, I was in a slight state of shock after realizing we could have been on our way to Cuba, and consequently was simply following my husbandly instincts to let Ale have her way.

As you have probably already guessed, things did not work out well with this particular piece of luggage, which arrived in Nicaragua sometime after the two of us. So, we ended up having to stay in Managua one night longer than I had planned, which is to say, one night more than zero nights. What I had read about Nicaragua made it clear that Managua was nothing to get excited about. I can now confirm this for you. The city became the capital relatively recently in 1852 as a compromise between the forever competing/alternating capital colonial cities of Leon and Granada. So, Managua doesn’t have any colonial “old city.” And what commercial downtown area it once had was completely destroyed, along with most of the city, by a massive earthquake in 1972. Not too long after that came the Sandinista Revolution, followed by the Contra Civil War. As a result, the city has only recently begun to be built back up. In Mexico, many moderate to major cities have lovely colonial downtown areas, which are surrounded on the outskirts by the not-so-pretty areas of lesser money, lesser architecture, lesser paint, lesser clean streets, etc. The further you move into the outskirts, the crappier it gets. Managua is just all crappy outskirts.

Nonetheless, if we wanted our luggage we had to stay for the night. We found ourselves a decent enough place and settled in, ordering some Pollo Campero, a popular chain in Central America that Ale was excited to get, having had it previously in a trip to El Salvador. Pretty good stuff, I must admit. We made some phone calls to ensure someone at the airline were thinking about our baggage and I also used the “down time in Managua” to research hotels and towns in order to set up our itinerary for the week. I had not had much time to do so before the trip because our friends Bob, Yoonhee and Sunshine had arrived in town just days after I had bought the plane tickets. By the time I went to sleep in Managua I had mapped out a rough itinerary for the week. Which leads me to yet another lesson I (re)learned on this trip, it’s best to do thorough and extensive research before you go on your trip to: a) make sure it’s a trip worth taking, and b) avoid having to do such research while you’re actually on the trip. (I have a good friend, Tina, who lived in Nicaragua for two years doing a stint with the Peace Corps. Unfortunately, at the time I was planning our trip, she and I were locked in an ongoing pseudo ideological struggle for the future of a secret organization to which we both currently belong. So, stupidly, did not take the advantage of my opportunity to pick her brain ahead of time about Nicaragua.)

It was lucky for us (and the LACSA airline people at the Augusto Sandino airport, trust me) that our baggage was there in the morning. I’m quite certain Ale would have freaked out otherwise. Despite being raised in Mexico, her tolerance for incompetence is lower than mine. So we grabbed our bag and were off to Leon on what appeared to be a relatively new highway along the edge of Lake Managua, one of two enormous lakes in Nicaragua. Leon is actually the second incarnation of itself. The first Leon, built in 1524 right on the shore of the lake, was destroyed by a volcanic eruption a hundred years later. The current Leon was built about further west toward the Pacific Coast and is famous for being the liberal university town of the country. As we drove along, I was impressed by the size of the lake and the Volcano towering above it. As we moved inland I was further impressed. It was amazing how utterly dry and barren most of the landscape was. This was not the luscious Central American jungles I have seen in Belize, Costa Rica and Guatemala. This looked more like the Kalahari during a drought. Not pretty. So far, this country sure was impressive, in a sad way.

Then we arrived at the outskirts of Leon about an hour and a half later, where I was further impressed with how unimpressive it all appeared. The city is filled with one-way streets which made it difficult to navigate, and after a confusing bit of being turned around, we ended up at a dead end filled with run down houses, giant pot-holes and litter in the streets, and dirty faced children standing around looking at us with the expression of stray dogs. It reminded me of the neighborhoods Ale and I had seen in the recent gang videos we had watched about the Central American gang, MS13. Friggin’ great. Plus, it was really, really hot. So, this dead-end was not a great moment on our trip. Why exactly--I am asking myself—did I decide to come to barren, dusty, hot-as-balls and poor-as-hell Nicaragua? The thought of being on the beaches of Cuba, drinking rum drinks, with the ocean breeze blowing through my hair, while I looked at obscenely sexy and barely covered Cuban women walking up and down the beaches was enough to melt my brain.

“Ya know, HONEY…not for nothin’, but if you had not been so obstinate on us going to Cuba we could have been there right now instead being stuck here in this shithole!”

“What are you talking about?!! YOU bought the tickets to this god forsaken place, though I have no idea why! So don’t blame this on ME!!!”

This basic exchange went on for a few more minutes in various forms until Ale stopped talking to me.

But, another lesson was about to be (re)learned; when touring another country, it is often darkest before the dawn. And though strange places may seem terrible under stress, they usually aren’t as bad as they may first seem. Soon, I managed to find my way into the nicer area of town. And we located one of the hotels I had wanted to check out, The Austria. It was pretty nice, with a well groomed central garden, but it lacked a pool, a feature that was clearly going to be mandatory in this heat. So, I headed over to another hotel that had been highly rated on the Trip Advisor site, La Perla. As soon as we pulled up we became excited. Things were looking up. It was a ridiculously beautifully restored hacienda, a posh little boutique hotel with a dozen rooms. It had vacancy and a pool, and was only ten dollars more, at 70 bucks a night. Now, I know this isn’t exactly “cheap” in terms of shoestring travel budgets, but it was a great deal for a hotel of this quality. We checked ourselves in, cranked the air conditioning in our antique-like furnished hotel room and headed out for the small pool. (Suddenly, Ale had no problem wearing a bathing suit while pregnant—even in the presence of other guests at the pool. Go figure.) I made use of both the room mini-bar and hotel poolside bar service over the next few hours while dipping myself in and out of the pool, reading and catching a buzz. Ah, yes, finally, vacation time. As the sun began to set a few hours later, it was time for a little detour to Naptown.

After we awoke, we strolled around town, which seemed much nicer now. Leon is actually a cute town with a lot of potential. The people seemed nice enough and everyone was out enjoying time with their families in the cool evening air. Revolutionary murals on the walls, as well as graffiti proclaiming, “Bush genocide, enemigo de humanidad,” reminded you of its status as the birthplace of the Sandinista revolutionary movement. Sure, overall the place could use a facelift, but considering what the country has been through, it’s remarkable that it’s as pleasant a town as it is. Leon is filled with an abundance of beautiful colonial churches, though many are in dire need of restoration. The central cathedral is enormous, and supposedly the largest in central and South America. The story goes that the plans for both the cathedral of Leon Nicaragua and Lima Peru were sent over on the same ship from Spain. Along the way the two drawings were mixed up—was someone paid off?—and Leon ended up with a monstrosity while Lima today has a relatively moderate cathedral. Eventually, our stroll led us to a beautiful little restaurant, with a very nice central courtyard, featuring Mediterranean food. The food was delicious, but what got me excited was the Jack Daniels, which went for about three dollars a piece. This was great news for someone like me who has the unfortunate luck to have as my favorite drink a brand that tends to be ridiculously expensive in all the countries all over the world.

The next day, we enjoyed the tasty breakfast included with the hotel price and then I sat in the shade with a beer and surfed the internet reading more about Nicaraguan beaches. It was then that I met Jim, the owner of La Perla, one of many Americans finding success in Latin America. He had spent years working as an engineer, then in various businesses, then moved himself down south of the border to work “for fun.” He and his partner had done the hotel together, remodeling the historic hacienda from near collapse into the gem I was now enjoying. (It was never clear to me if “partner,” which he said frequently, meant strictly business or not. This large, husky, Midwestern guy did not trip my normally astute “gaydar.” But, as good as my gaydar is, it’s not full-proof. I’ve been in enough gay bars to know there are many exceptional gay men who can look and act like anyone from Archie Bunker to Charlton Heston to Mickey Rourke.) He took great pride in talking about the hotel and in giving me a tour of the casino he was having built across the street. It was clear he was pinning his future hopes on things improving in Leon and Nicaragua. He was proud of the many people he was employing and the work he was doing with the local chamber of commerce. As you can imagine, he was not thrilled with the recent “election” of Daniel Ortega from the socialist Sandinista party, and he was waiting to see how this new administration will treat foreign investors, especially Americans.

Interestingly enough, Daniel Ortega had been a sort of hero of mine after he became famous for leading a popular revolution against a U.S. supported Somoza dictatorship in 1979. The Somoza dynasty (along with their U.S. business partners) had been ravaging and exploiting the country and the people for some 50 years. After winning the revolution, Ortega became president. Initially, he seemed a relatively moderate “communist” and accepted the hand of friendship and diplomatic recognition from President Jimmy Carter, whose “moral foreign policy” found legitimacy in the Sandinistas revolutionary cause. Unfortunately, cold warrior Ronald Reagan came to power soon afterwards and cut all ties with those “commie bastards.” First in Nicaragua—the argument went—then up through Guatemala and Mexico would come the march of the hammer and sickle, straight from Moscow to the United States of America. Forget that the reason “socialism” appealed to the poor people of this country was not because they were card-carrying Marxists versed in Leninist theories of revolution, but because the “capitalist system” they had been familiar with had long abused them unmercifully, and without democratic redress. I often think that if Carter’s approach had been maintained, and relations had been allowed to normalize and develop, we might have created a functional relationship that respected the common people of Nicaragua which would have also generated a moderating influence on the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. After all, Norway and Sweden are essentially “socialist countries,” and we have good relations with them.

But, that was not to be; and Reagan was soon supplying weapons, supplies and military advice to those in Nicaragua looking to overturn the revolution and the Sandinistas. The “Contras,” as they were called, were the remnants of the former dictator’s National Guard, and defenders of the upper business classes. The CIA trained Contras were so brutal, dirty and destabilizing that the U.S. Congress rejected Reagan’s requests and outlawed any U.S. support. Not to be stifled, Reagan’s subordinates (allegedly without his knowledge) continued funding the Contras by illegally selling weapons to Iran, the sworn enemy of the U.S. (Truth can truly be stranger than fiction.) The Contras used that money to create a painful insurgency that impeded the literacy, health care and agrarian reform efforts of the new government. The Contras also managed to murder American Benjamin Linder, who had taken his engineering degree to Nicaragua to build hydroelectric dams in rural areas. These dams provided lights for evening literacy classes and refrigeration for vaccines. These projects also made the new socialist government look like they were doing a good job for the people of Nicaragua, so in the minds of the Contras and the Reagan administration, they had to be stopped. You know, in the name of freedom and the American Way and anti-communism and all that shit. Ben Linder is still a recognized hero in Nicaragua. In Leon I came across a café that bears his name. (It was closed for Holy Friday, so I didn’t get to sample the wares.)

Under pressure from the U.S. and other Nicaraguan groups critical of the Sandinistas censorship of the press and draconian measures taken during the Contra War, Ortega did something truly amazing for a communist revolutionary leader—he held free and fair elections and stepped down when he lost. It was the U.S. supported Violeta Chamorro, a former Sandinista supporter and the wife of a newspaper editor murdered by the last ruling Somoza, who represented the opposition coalition and assumed the presidency. She then did some remarkable things herself, keeping some former Sandinistas in her administration, continuing with many of the Sandinista social programs, and collecting and destroying all the weapons in the country, burying them all in cement in “Peace Park.” This last act is one reason that Nicaragua is less dangerous than Guatemala, where the weapons from their similar civil strife during the 80’s still abound. Unfortunately for Chamorro, once the Cold War ended in the early nineties, the U.S. had no reason to support her against the communist threat. Aid to Nicaragua was cut and the still wounded and struggling nation soon became the poorest country in the hemisphere, behind Haiti—which is saying a lot. With Nicaragua in dire straits again, the Sandinistas enjoyed a resurgence of popular support and Ortega recently won the presidency again—though the results of the election are widely disputed. Other than the ubiquitous fact that ugly pink billboards of him are currently plastered all over the country, claiming his election is a fulfillment of a promise from God (how un-Marxist!), it is unclear what his return to power will mean for Nicaragua. Foreign investors and entrepreneurs like Jim are holding their collective breath, that’s for sure.

One thing I learned from Jim during our talk was that there was a road, currently under repair with a 10 million dollar U.S. grant, that headed due west to a little beach town called Poneloya. He clearly did not think there was much to the town now, but hoped the road would foster development there, including a beach club spin-off from his hotel. Some of the travel guides described it quite favorably—“sleepy little fishing town with natural beaches”—so Ale and I hoped in the car in hopes of enjoying the sand and surf for the afternoon.

First of all, “under construction” is an understatement. This road was as new and rough a road as you can imagine. It was basically a swath of recently cleared land. Heavy equipment lined the road. Remarkably, Jim would tell me later that this road, even in its completely raw state, was better than the remnant of the previously existing one. Ale was not thrilled with the bumpy ride, and I was later quite pissed off when a splash of some sort of oil/tar, something black and greasy, was sprayed all over the side and hood of my white rental car. I mean, sprayed ALL OVER the side and hood of my white rental car. For the next few days, we received stares and looks of pity and disgust for this mess. Some folks, when walking by our car in traffic, would wipe a finger across the splatter in curiosity to their own chagrin when they realized they were stuck with the oily gunk on their hands. Suckers!

The “beach town” was a joke by any standard. And I’m not being a Jersey Shore snob when I say this. I’ve been to poor beach towns in Ecuador, Guatemala, Costa Rica and Mexico, so I can say this place was in a particularly sad state. Since it was a holiday, there were some people there. We went to the one area of the beach that seemed to be a public spot, only to be further disappointed. The beach itself was actually quite nice. But, there were a series of booth like cabanas there, mostly made of plastic plastered with beer advertisements with dirty tables set up. I didn’t see anything that looked like real food, but there were plenty of drinks to be had. The beach consisted of the typical volcanic sand I’ve encountered in Guatemala and Costa Rica. It is not (usually) as fine and soft as white sand, and it can get twice as hot. Since there were no umbrellas for rent, and no palapas (thatched shade) set up on the beach, we knew it would be uncofomfortable to sit in the sun for more than a few minutes. Unfortunately, the only shade to be found was in the make-shift beach bars which were accompanied by deafening reggaeton music. And while I like some Mariachi, and LOVE Cuban salsa and Colombian cumbia, that raunchy obnoxious reggaeton gets on my nerves quickly. So we moved on, driving through the little strip, past some houses half abandoned, some so-so and a few very nice, until we spotted a passable looking restaurant where we stopped and had some decent seafood. All I could think about was what incredible potential this place had, just like Leon. When the new road from Leon is completed hopefully there will be some serious effort at concerted and thoughtful development. Hopefully it can be done in a way that offers some opportunity and fairness to the desperately poor of the country, whose presence is everywhere.

The next day, after faithfully lounging by the pool with my pregnant wife, Ale encouraged me to check out some options for eco-tourism. There was a place advertizing tours a block away, selling trips onto the lake and hikes up the nearby volcanoes. You can zip line down some volcanoes and even “surf” down the ashes of others. Pretty cool stuff. But, I took my time getting there and showed up ten minutes after the last tour left. Bummer. The young guy who owned the shop was also a an American who shared the same guarded optimism about business prospects in Nicaragua with Jim at the Leon Hotel.

After breakfast and a swim the next morning, I took a walking tour of the city, snapping a boat load of pictures. I checked out a couple of other nice, but more modest, hotels and found prices from $25 dollars (with a fan) to $45 (with air conditioning). Afterwards, we packed up our retarded-looking black speckled car and headed southwest to the beach part of our trip. After seeing the state of the beach near Leon, we uncharacteristically considered a well regarded all inclusive beach resort we had read about online. Unfortunately, enough other people considered it this holiday week to fill the entire hotel. So, where to go? We decided to skip any other “sleepy fishing towns” described in the guides—afraid we’d find more duds than gems—and headed straight for one of the best known beach towns in the country, San Juan del Sur. This once “sleepy fishing town” has been put on the map in the past ten years by cruise ships which have made San Juan del Sur a day stop on the way up the west coast. The town has also received notice brought by Matthew McConaughey who visits the town for its well regarded surf. We had located some decent looking hotels online, but they too were all booked up, it being Semana Santa. Still, we decided to take our chances and headed there anyway. I could have been in Cuba this week, and, by God, I was going to have some quality beach time!

There were two routes to San Juan. The first took the new highway back the way we came around the lake and through Managua. The other, more direct route cut straight across the western plains of the country. Naturally, I preferred the straight line. However, shortly after turning off the main road there were some highwaymen there, blocking the road with a rope, ready to jack us up. Luckily, they were only about seven years old and armed with a smile and a shovel. You see, the road was in such poor shape that these kids would “fix” it by filling in the pot holes and then charging passersby a toll for compensation. There was little to no work actually being done on the road, but the kids were really cute (and poor) so we paid up and took their picture. As we sat there, looking at the dilapidated road, I pondered whether to move forward (NO) or head back on the newer road we knew was intact (YES). There were the occasional other cars heading down this way (DID YOU NOTICE THEY ARE ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY LARGE SUV’S?) so I decided it must be passable. I asked Ale, Do you mind if we take the more direct and yet un-driven road ahead? “Sure, Bebe,” she said, “take which ever way you want.” And we moved on.

I don’t know how long it was before I fully accepted that this was a giant mistake. I suppose it was after we had gone far enough that I felt turning around was not an option. The little kids collecting a toll? That was cute the first 20 times. And while I was able to simply ignore them and drive on by without any consequence, I began to wonder how easy it would be for some nefariously minded folks, armed with more than a smile and an old shovel, to cause us serious harm. The further we drove, the worse the road became, and the less of any kind of civilization we saw. I began to feel like a slow moving target. But, given Ale’s increasingly foul mood, I thought it best not to bring this up. Before too long, she had begun complaining about the constant slowing, stopping, zigging and zagging required to avoid the ever present potholes, bumps and rocks in our path. There were actually times when driving on the shoulder was preferable to the washed out road. Earlier that morning, she had mentioned that she feared she might be getting the cold Bob and family had brought from Philadelphia, since she had a sore throat and headache coming on. Oh, and did I mention she was 5 months pregnant? It was hot and dusty and barren, and she was miserable. “Why did you have to take this way, menso?! (dummy) This is no kind of road for a sick, pregnant woman!” She was right, but what could I say, I had asked her and she had given me the green light. I should have used my head and not base my decision on her response. For the second time on this trip I was being given the silent treatment by my wife. And for the second time I was learning, once again, that there are times my wife doesn’t really know or mean what she is saying. All I could do was keep moving and pray the totally fucked up road in front of me ended soon. Thank God for the radio station I found, which played a great selection of 70’s and 80’s soft rock. Phil Collins never sounded so good.

As I looked out at the barren landscape of Nicaragua, I thought about the conversations at the environmental and political groups I was involved in during my college years. I had heard about the environmental horrors happening in Nicaragua caused by the slashing and burning forested lands in order to create grazing land for cattle. It was difficult to reconcile the dry, desolate countryside I was observing (while avoiding car swallowing pot holes) with the fact that Nicaragua was the number one supplier of foreign beef to American fast food chains like McDonald’s and Burger King during the 1970’s. If I had seen with my own eyes how devastating the long term results of this short sited policy would be, I would have probably been arrested (even more than I was during those years) for some civil disobedience antics at Ronald McDonald’s.

Beef exports!? Are you serious?! The few cows I saw along the road looked as if they had just escaped some Holocaust concentration camp for cattle. This bleak place couldn’t support ten cows, much less commercial cattle ranching. At least, not anymore. So, whose bright idea was it to raise cattle in Nicaragua and destroy the countryside? Well, suffice to say it was the people who had a monopoly on the meat processing and distribution for Nicaraguan beef. You guessed it, none other than the Somoza family, who owned the largest slaughter house in Nicaragua and six meat packing plants in Miami. Not only that, they contributed to the deforestation by making deals with American lumber companies, wherein their family was paid millions for the rights to harvest Nicaraguan timber without any legal obligation to reforest. Yeah, Anastasio Somoza (Sr. and Jr.) were ginormous assholes. (Like father, like son.) And these brutal dictators were hand picked, installed and supported by the U.S. government. Somoza is the guy about whom FDR supposedly said, “Yeah, he’s a son-of-a-bitch, but he’s our son-of-a-bitch.” Gee, Thanks America! And people wonder why the Nicaraguan revolutionaries were attracted to communist ideals? I don’t.

So, on and on I drove the barely intact road, dotted with the saddest hovels you can imagine. I drove even slower now, with Ale asleep, and pondered how the U.S. has loomed over central America the way the huge volcanoes I was seeing towered over the Nicaraguan countryside. And thankfully, like a visit to the dentist, the road from hell eventually came to a welcome end; and after a couple more hours we found ourselves approaching the town San Juan del Sur. Finally, I was going to get myself some quality beach time!

Yeah, right... Maybe in some other blog (like one about a trip to Cuba) there would be a description of my happy times chillin’ on the beach. But, this is about the worst vacation ever, and Miguelito was not going to spend one minute of bliss with his toes in the sand. Not one.

The first order of business was getting a hotel. We had about an hour of daylight left. The town is small, nestled at the foot of some hills and around the mouth of a small, well defined bay. The streets were filled with cars and people, some already drunk. (The people, not the cars.) After getting the “no room at the inn” treatment from four or five places, I couldn’t help but identify with Joseph of old, feeling like a schmuck for coming into town during the Passover holiday season without a reservation, and with a pregnant wife in tow. One guy, trying to be helpful, recommended a place “just out of town.” After winding over the hills for a mile or two, we found ourselves in a posada across the street from a large graveyard, sporting a dirty unswimmable pool and a large parrot screeching something in Spanish every 20 seconds. And like all the other places in town, they were charging twice as much as the beautiful hotel we had just left in Leon. So we thanked the man for his ridiculous offer and headed back into town where we somehow managed to find a room a block away from the beach.

The hotel was OK. The rooms were basic and drab, but it had a TV and an air conditioner, so it would do. We decided to rest in the cool air and watch some TV and/or nap until dinner. Sounds logical right? But, no, this is the worst vacation ever, so of course there was some jackass below our window in the parking lot beside the hotel with his hatchback open cranking his 80’s metal out of his subwoofers, drinking beer and playing air guitar by himself. Loser. I know enough about Latin American culture to know complaining about such a thing is useless. It’s a good thing that I didn’t have a rifle with me or I’d be writing this from a Nicaraguan jail. So I turned up the TV and air full blast and we did our best to relax for a while.

The main strip of San Juan runs along the curve of the beach with hotels, shops and restaurants. It was filled with pedestrians and street vendors. It reminded us a bit of Puerto Escondido. At the far end of the strip—away from the hotel, thank God—were a couple of portable inflatable nightclubs set up on the beach pumping out “poochie-poochie” music (as Ale calls it). After a stroll and some people watching we settled on an open air restaurant on the beach, where we enjoyed a delicious meal, some drinks, a table serenade and an unexpected fireworks display. On the way back to the hotel, there was a parade down the main strip, consisting mostly of alcohol sponsored floats topped with scantily clad young girls. It was lively and festive and perhaps, I thought, this was all going to work out OK. Tomorrow we would head to the beach were I could read and swim and relax. Ale headed back to the hotel early and I found my way to a little surfer bar, The Iguana, where I had some drinks and watched a surf video on TV. It was literally a movie about San Juan del Sur and how it’s fame as a surfing spot has transformed it from a “sleepy little fishing town” into a vacation destination of some repute. There’s no surfing to be done in the main bay, which like Puerto Escondido is without any waves and filled with boats. However, apparently both north and south of the town there are some of the best surfing nooks and crannies in the western hemisphere. The guys in the videos talked about how in the old days, they had to walk hours to get to these spots, but now there are four wheel drive vehicles that will shuttle you back and forth. I must admit, the surfing I saw on the video was some of the most impressive I’ve ever seen. Really incredible stuff. I did not spot Mathew McConaughey, who I understand also patronizes this bar when he’s in town.

While watching the youngsters in the Iguana get drunk, I was thinking: tomorrow we’ll get up and head to the beach. We’ll rent a palapa, or an umbrella, stick our toes in the sand and enjoy the ocean breeze. This vacation is going to work out fine. It all seemed so within reach. But when we arrived to the beach the next morning, it was obvious we had made some huge assumptions. The beach in San Juan is the ugliest beach I have ever seen. In fact, I hesitate to call it a beach. At least Peneloya beach near Leon had sand—rough, black and hot, though it was. This “beach” consisted of mud, covered everywhere with large rocks ranging from 1 to 4 inches in diameter. There were no palapas and no umbrellas. There was no one set up on the beach in day-at-the-beach fashion, only people standing and walking and some, mostly clothed, jumping in and out of the shallow, calm, dirty looking water. You MUST be fucking kidding me. I tried desperately not to think about Havana and what could have been...

Given this disappointment, and the lackluster and overpriced hotel we were in, we decided to get some brunch and leave a day early for Granada, the last stop on our tour. We found the perfect spot to eat and get on the internet at the Espresso cafe. A new and trendy place filled with tourists that represented perhaps the best of what Nicaragua can become. The several British girls working behind the counter made me suspect that, admittedly, it too, was foreign owned. (Obviously, local owned is better, but foreign investors can help by creating jobs and modeling good business practices.) While there, we met an interesting German couple. These two older women had shipped a motorcycle from Germany to Alaska and were half way through their year long trip down the Pan American highway. They talked about how much they loved the beauty of the American Northwest and the style and personality of San Francisco. They said they enjoyed much of Mexico, and the jungles and ruins of Guatemala, but they were not too impressed with Nicaragua. (I feel you, man.) They also shared with us their difficulties adjusting to Latin American culture. If you think it’s tough for Americans to deal with some of these special ways—imagine the same for a German! It was quite funny and sad to hear her relay a story of frustration concerning their failed attempt to mail some postcards home from a post office in Mexico City, such a seemingly simple task completely FUBAR’ed by apathetic incompetence. The woman admitted she had a meltdown on the spot and burst into tears. I wondered how they were going to fare for six more months of this. Hopefully they won’t give up before they arrive in Chile and Argentina, which I understand are more European in many ways than the rest of Latin America.

I understand their frustration. I deal with it all the time. In fact, I dealt with it immediately after hearing their story. Upon returning to the hotel, I asked if there was anyone around who would/could wash the black, greasy spatter off my white car. I was tired of being looked at like I was an idiot. Two separate people working behind the desk assured me there was no one around who could help me with my request. However, when I went out to the car to load up our things, the attendant there was wandering around with a hose wetting down the parking lot, presumably to keep the dust down. He was more than happy to wash my car for a couple of bucks. So without pondering too long on why the hotel workers had offered me such obviously wrong information, we drove on to Granada. Unfortunately, I had lost the signal for the cool radio station the day before and could not get much more than several stations of Christian music. Sure, the music was sort of sappy, but I couldn’t tell what they were saying so it was better than nothing for me. Ale, on the other hand couldn’t take it. She had woken up to it the day before on the way to San Juan, with her first words, “Why are you listening to this shit!?” Despite my best efforts, including asking the women—an old lady, daughter and granddaughter—to whom we gave a lift for a while, I was never able to relocate the station. (It’s likely these poor Nicaraguan ladies did not listen to 70’s soft rock in English.) It didn’t matter though, because Grenada was only about an hour away, and our luck was about to change for the better.

As disappointed as I was entering Leon, I was just as ecstatic entering Granada, which shines with newer paint, groomed parks and gorgeous architecture. The central plaza is lined with a series of hotels that rival (but don’t top) La Perla. Horse drawn carriages line the square ready to take you on a tour of this magical colonial town. I was excited beyond control. THIS is what I meant when I was thinking earlier in the week about what the city of Leon could become if it lived up to its potential. I suppose this was to be expected. I had read that in the long rivalry between Leon and Granada over the location of the capital and government, Granada had been the town of the conservatives, whereas Leon had been the town of the liberal intellectuals. It’s no wonder then, the Sandinista Revolution began in the university town of Leon, or that the first Somoza was assassinated there. Granada sits on the edge of Lake Nicaragua, which, unlike Leon, has access to the Caribbean—and thus to Europe—by way of the Rio San Juan, which separates Nicaragua from Costa Rica. Granada is a resilient city. Access to the seas made it a rich town. It also made it a target for English pirates who periodically sailed up the river, crossed the lake and sacked the city. It was also completely burned to the ground in 1857 by William Walker. Walker was an American swashbuckler who came to Nicaragua at the request of the Liberals of Leon in order to aid them in their fight with the Conservatives of Granada. He and his mercenaries defeated the Conservatives, and then refused to leave. Walker finagled his way into the presidency for a brief time before being overthrown by an uncharacteristically united Leon/Granada front. Upon his retreat, before being captured and executed, he destroyed Granada, even going so far as to erect a grave marker reading, “Here Lies Granada.” Looking around Granada today, you’d never know it.

Ale and I checked into the very nice Hotel Colonial, just off the main square, immediately got ourselves poolside at one of the two available pools. And once in the pool, I quickly got myself bar-side at the swim up bar. After two days of rocky roads, barren landscape and shitty “beaches,” we were back to full-on “vacation relaxation.” We chatted up a retired American couple who were living in Costa Rica. Due to the slow, bureaucratic process of achieving residency there, were forced to leave the country every six months for a week. Mandatory vacations! After our time at the pool we headed out to find the restaurant the couple had recommended to us. Along the way, we discovered a well lit cobblestoned strip of restaurants, bars and shops. It was clear that this city was making a conscious effort at earning tourists’ favor. The restaurant they had recommended was closed, so we ate at a steak place before having drinks outside at another bar, watching the local street kids perform break dancing and other physical feats, as well as some Semana Santa processions.

The next morning, we had brunch in the nifty café right next to the hotel, where we did some reading and internet surfing in the indoor/outdoor area in the back. The place had a sort of hippie-community vibe. Adjoining it was a used book store and there were various rooms with hammocks and areas for private conversation or studying. Flyers on the wall advertized poetry readings (Nicaraguans are famous for their love of poetry) and “blind massage.” (I guess I can see how getting a massage from a blind guy might be cool, but it also struck me as a bit creepy.) After Ale went back to the hotel I managed to get myself into a game of ping-pong with some guys that were playing at a table there. I haven’t played ping-pong in quite some time, and am usually better than average players. However, these dudes obviously played every day and simply destroyed me. I think I scored 2 points the first game and 6 the next, and it was clear they were just toying with me. I was thinking that maybe I should be playing the blind guys I saw sitting around the café, apparently waiting for clients. I might have continued with my efforts to shake the rust off my game and make it competitive, but I was already soaked with sweat. Even though it was in the shade, at it was barely noon, it was blazing hot. So I went next door to join Ale at the pool for the afternoon. There was a tour agency next to the hotel advertizing trips to the mountains, the volcanoes and onto the lake and it’s many islands, but I was over all that and ready to chill with my wife for the remainder of the trip.

And that is exactly what we did for the next two days. More pool time, more food and drink, more reading, more strolls around Granada. I enjoyed my time chatting with a mother and daughter working in a hotdog place about politics. They, being from Granada, were not fans of Ortega and the Sandinistas. All in all it was lovely. And, perhaps, just lovely enough to make the entire crazy week worthwhile. But, then again…probably not. Why not? Because the craziness wasn’t over yet.

Since the connection in El Salvador had caused us problems, I was happy that our flight home was a direct flight to Mexico City. Or so we thought. As we approached the DF, we were flying above massive cloud formations. They were white on top, but I could only imagine what was going on below. Soon the pilot came on to tell us we were flying to Queretaro to circle for a while in the sky due to severe weather. When the weather didn’t break soon enough, we were told we would be landing in Guadalajara to wait things out. Great. But, it gets better. Meaning, it gets worse. After sitting in the plane on the tarmac for 45 minutes, and hearing that we may be there for hours, people started to get restless. “We need to get off this plane!” people began telling the stewardess. “Sorry,” she replied, like Sonny in A Bronx Tale, “now yous can’t leave.” You see, they had brilliantly decided to land our plane in the domestic terminal of the airport. So, because we were an international flight, they couldn’t process us through immigration. Some people on the plane were actually meant to fly to Guadalajara, with a stop in Mexico City, so they were naturally eager to get off the plane and get on with their business. “Give us us free!” people cried like the captured African in Amistad. “Nope, you are all going to have to stay here, fly back to Mexico City and try to find another flight back to Guadalajara.” It was insanity. It’s a good thing the German dykes weren’t with us, they would have gone NAZI on their asses.

Thankfully, after a near mutiny by the passengers, they set up a make-shift immigration and luggage receiving area and processed us through. Those destined for Guadalajara were allowed to move on. The rest of us were shuttled to a terminal where we had to go through check-in again before boarding the plane. After a three and a half hour delay that lasted longer than the original flight from Nicaragua, we were finally back in the air heading home. Well, not so fast. Once again, as we approached the DF, the pilot came on to tell us the weather was a still a problem and we would have to head to Queretaro again to circle for a while longer. It seemed the worst vacation ever just would not end! I couldn’t believe that they had sent us back in the air before things had cleared up. But, I was keeping my cool. I had gotten a good look at our pilots in Guadalajara and they both looked under twenty five years old. I told myself it was better to circle around in the sky a little longer than to REALLY make this the worst vacation ever and die in a fiery high speed explosion. Mercifully, we only circled for about twenty minutes before heading back to Mexico and finally landing. But, it wasn’t quite over. Unbelievably, they landed our plane in the international section this time, even though we had already been processed into the country. When a woman asked us for our immigration forms (which we had handed over in Guadalajara) and then told us we had to fill out new ones, Ale almost strangled the woman. It was all so very Mexican.

So, let’s recap the lessons I (re)learned from this trip. Well, first, I (re)learned that sometimes I need to apply what I know about my wife and ignore what she is actually saying to me. Would she have had a great time in Cuba? Probably, and I should have known that. And I also (re)learned something about travel too. Should you plan a vacation to an unknown destination without doing thorough research? Probably not. (But, if you never take a shot at getting off the beaten path you’ll never have the amazing discovery of some unexpected wonder.) Certainly, I (re)learned that you should not check baggage small enough to carry on a plane. And I definitely (re)learned that touring requires flexibility and a positive attitude. I also (re)learned that Nicaragua, like many Latin American countries, has suffered enormously from the shitty policies of its northern big brother. Finally, I (re)learned that the world is an interesting and varied place, full of wonderful differences and captivating histories. I love being out in it.

Would I recommend Nicaragua for a vacation—not exactly. If you are into traveling cheap, and willing to do the hostel tour and climb some huge volcanoes, then maybe it’s worth a visit. If you are into surfing hidden coves with monster waves, definitely. If you’re looking for silky white beaches with beach town amenities, definitely not. I can only hope that Nicaragua will continue to grow and develop in a way that is good for the majority of the people. And perhaps in ten years, it will be a place with more to offer. Maybe I’ll head back someday and find out. But, then again, I think I’ll go to Cuba instead.

You can view a whole bunch of pictures from this trip in a slideshow format at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/miguelito2066/sets/72157617050536714/

Little Miss Sunshine Tours Mexico City

As you know, I really love living in Mexico City. Sure, it’s got its quirks and hassles, but they are mostly outweighed by the museums, sculpture, restaurants, parks, nearby colonial towns and beaches, pristine nature, and the overall freshness of living in a new environment. I relish the opportunity to show my friends and family from home around my new city, and even put them up while they are here. Regretfully, I haven’t been able to extend that hospitality as much as I would like, the lone visitor to Mexico City so far being my very well traveled friend Nik. That’s why I was totally pumped when I learned that we would be hosting Bob and Yoonhee, and their beautiful daughter Sunshine, for the first part of my spring break week.

The first benefit of having visitors from back home is their impending visit lights a fire under your ass in terms of getting things in order. First, we went out shopping for a crib and stroller/car seat for Sunshine to use. Honestly, though I am going to have a baby of my own living with us in four short months, I have given little practical thought to how we will accommodate the little guy. This foray into the world of actual baby items brought me to a new level of “wow, this is really going to happen.” I also went out that week and bought Ale a desk to put in the unused quarter of the open area of our apartment. Staying up late putting it all together for her to wake up to made me also feel like I was preparing for fatherhood, as I will likely be doing similar late night preparations of Christmas gifts for Miguelito Jr., or “Beto” (short for Alberto) which we think we may call him. We have a second bedroom in the apartment, but it was mostly being used as an unceremonious storage closet for the many boxes we’ve accumulated over the past three moves. The night before they arrived I scrambled to sort and consolidate, locating many a lost article—“oh, so THAT’S where that’s been!” Having found as much as I did, I am now committed (no, really!) to spending all day some upcoming weekend to a more thorough and complete job. I also managed to do some last minute replacement of kitchen tiles, mount a shelf for the toaster oven and hang a large picture that had long been on my to-do list. Finally, after several days of preparation, we were ready to welcome our friends to our (relatively) new (to us) apartment.

Things got off to a scary start when the traffic down the main highway to the airport, Viaducto, was uncommonly jammed at 10 pm. Ale figured the construction of another east-west artery in the northern part of the city may have been the culprit. My anxiety grew as it took close to 45 minutes to reach the airport and we had not discussed a contingency plan of contact if we were not there to greet them. My worry was for naught, as Bob, Yoohnee and Little Miss Sunshine appeared out of customs about 30 seconds after our arrival! The ride home took less than 10 minutes, so they missed the opportunity to experience a staple of Mexico City life, stiffling traffic. As we drove home, Bob commented on the experience so many have when flying over the city at night—“It’s SO huge!”

My buddy Jim Weathers was leaving the next day for the Dominican Republic, so he stopped by to meet my friends. He arrived in a state common to those who know him: inebriated and elevated. Despite the presence of the baby, he carried on in his jovial manner, complete with “fuckin’ ‘ell” this and “mother-fuckin’” that. We all got a big laugh when Bob, miming for Sunshine seated on his lap, began moving her arms, pointing at Jim and saying, “Hey, who is that crazy mother-fucker over there?!” Jim’s girlfriend Laura soon dragged him away (I suspect) for some last chance lovin’ (she would not be joining him in the DR) and Bob and Co. headed for bed after a long day of traveling.

While I had managed to get the day off, Ale had to work, so I decided to take our guests on a general tour of the city. We began with a walk up Nuevo Leon where we soon encountered a Friday street market on Campeche. Yoonhee took advantage of the cheap fresh juice available and I shared with them the common Mexican treat of jicama, a sweet root covered in lime juice and chile pepper. As we meandered our way through the side streets of La Condesa, we discussed the perfect weather conditions, and how “surprisingly nice” the neighborhood was. La Condesa, named after a countess who once owned the original hacienda, was developed as a neighborhood beginning in the 1920’s and features an array of art deco architecture. It was home to the rich and famous of Mexico City until the big earthquake of 1985, when those who could, fled for newer (earthquake ready) upscale neighborhoods. This left Condesa in decline for a brief time, only to become the trendy revitalized area it is now that so impressed Bob and Yoonhee. Finally, we arrived at the nexus of this trendy little neighborhood, the intersection of Atlixco, Michoacan, Tamalipus and Vincente Suarez where we had a delightful brunch at café Buena Tierra. Bob ordered some Chilaquiles, a very traditional Mexican breakfast dish consisting of tortillas covered in a red or green sauce, cream, onions and your choice of chicken or fried eggs on top. Yoonhee ordered another Mexican staple, though I can’t remember what it was. Both loved their meals. (I specifically remember what Bob had because he asked me to repeat the name of it to him 50 times over the next few days: “CHEE-LAH-KEE-LEHS”)

After eating, we headed over a couple blocks to Parque Espana, the smaller of two fairly large parks in our part of town, where we made our way to a shady bench. Sunshine was too young to make use of the enormous jungle gym contraption that sits at the heart of the park, but she was very much entranced with the sights and sounds of the fountain near our bench in a small pond. Her excitement practicing her walking also garnered her smiles from the old man seated next to us, enjoying the shade and eating fresh oranges. Next, I walked them through Roma—my old neighborhood—where I showed them my old apartment building and introduced them to my old favorite street taco place. (Yes, it had only been about an hour and a half since brunch, but Bob doesn’t need much of an excuse to eat!) I ordered an Alambre, a mix of steak, pork, peppers and onion, which he and Yoonhee devoured. We then headed further north to the beautiful Diana fountain, where we turned right for a stroll down Paseo de la Reforma, the “Champs Elisee of Mexico City.” A flower market lined the wide pedestrian promenade, offering visual and olfactory stimulus to the already beautiful, tree-lined thoroughfare. When we stopped at the golden Angel of Independencia, the most famous landmark and de-facto symbol of the city glimmering under the blue sky, it was time for a few comments on Mexican History. I explained why, unlike in America, there is a difference between the war of “Independence” and the war of “Revolution” in Mexican history. Independence refers to the war against the Spanish Crown, between1810-1821, and Revolution refers to the civil wars and political upheaval against the ruling elite, and between competing political factions between1910-1921.

The boulevard on which we walked also draws its name from another major period of political transformation in Mexico’s tumultuous past. La Reforma occurred (for the most part) under the beloved indigenous president, Benito Juarez, between1854-1876. These liberal reforms stripped the Catholic Church and the military of their many privileges and undemocratic political influence. The reforms also provided further protections and considerations for the average Mexican citizen established during the revolution, including a “Mexican Bill of Rights.” Paseo de la Reforma, the boulevard now honoring these improvements, was ironically constructed by the “Emperor of Mexico” Maximilian I, as a gift for his wife, Empress Carlota. Maximilian I assumed the throne of the Mexican Empire in 1864 with the help of French Emperor Napoleon III, who was looking to expand his influence in the Americas. (His blue coated troops were the bad guys in the Zorro movies.) Rather than retaining the name of the Empress, the boulevard Reforma now honors the democratic changes of the man who deposed her interloper husband and had him executed. Ha! Take that PUNK! (Sadly, his last words were, “Viva Mexico!”)

Next we hopped in a cab and headed downtown to El Centro, another area teeming with history. We jumped out at the beautiful Bellas Artes, a palace built as a cultural arts center at the early 20th Century. It houses a theatre, concert hall, and galleries for exhibitions, such as the Frida Khalo exhibition I saw last year. As it was awfully bright out, we headed over to the adjoining Parque Alameda for some more shade, where Sunshine got some fresh mommy-milk and Yoonhee and I had some icy treats. We then strolled down Avenida Cinco de Mayo (which is not the date of Mexican Independence or Revolution) toward the imposing Zocalo, the enormous central plaza of the city. All Spanish founded cities have such an arrangement, and even small towns have a modest version, but there is none that I know of larger than this one. It is the site of many traveling exhibitions, such as the Nomad Museum’s photographic exhibit, Ashes and Snow last year, as well as the site of many types of demonstrations, celebrations and events. At one end of the square lies the Metropolitan Cathedral, the largest and oldest cathedral in Latin America. It took over two hundred years to complete and is an amalgam of styles, though mostly Baroque. On the other three sides of the Zocalo stand the massive colonial structures that once served as the Palace of the Spanish American Viceroy and the seat of the colonial government which ruled from this location on behalf of the Spanish Crown from 1535-1821. (The other New World viceroy was the Viceroyalty of Peru, seated in Lima, which governed from Panama to Tierra del Fuego before being broken up into smaller viceroyalties due to problems with communication and transportation.) Today the National Palace is a museum, housing the original legislative rooms of the young Mexican Republic, as well as the famous murals of Diego Rivera depicting the history of Mexico. The only actual governing body remaining on the Zocalo is the city government. Perhaps the most famous annual event that occurs here is “El Grito”, a ritual re-enactment of the original call (or “grito”) for independence by the mestizo-sympathetic priest, Miguel Hidalgo. Tens of thousands gather under the palace balcony on September 16 to hear the president proclaim, “Viva Mexico!!!” thus signaling a burst of fireworks, singing, dancing and general Mexican revelry. I haven’t attended it there. I felt nearly crushed among the crowds at The Grito in the relatively small town of San Miguel de Allende two years ago, so don’t think I would appreciate the hording masses attending the event in the Zocalo.

There was an event planned that day in the Zocalo, though nothing of any national historical significance; a mass Quincenanera of 300 young debutantes, celebrating their “Sweet 15,” as it were. As we enjoyed some more Mexican delights—“sopes y sopa” from a hotel restaurant overlooking the Zocalo (did I mention Bob loves to eat?) we looked down upon the dress rehearsal of these young girls on the stage and listened to the music bouncing off the colonial walls. To top off the day, and to offer my guests another authentic Mexican perspective, we took the metro home. The Mexico City subway line is one of the most dependable things in the city, though it can get sardine crowded at times on certain lines. Since this was my first time heading home from the Centro to my new apartment, I couldn’t guarantee the passenger volume would be baby friendly; however, the cars were only half full and there was no need to go look for a taxi. In fact, Sunshine’s unique beauty got her noticed quite a lot, earning her more smiles during the ride home. (People smiling at this kid would be a theme for the weekend.) That night we were visited by my buddy Will, who stopped by for some wine and a feast of Mexican sushi, filled with (a strangely DF tradition) Philly Cream Cheese. I was happy to have two very good friends, one old and one new, finally meet.

The next day it was up and at ‘em with a long list of other things to do and see. Or so I thought. I was learning that the morning routine we had experienced the day before was the norm: Sunshine waking up at the ass crack of dawn, hanging out for a few hours, then laying down for a midmorning nap before we could effectively get out of the house for the day. So, the Turibus ride I envisioned would not happen. Nor would we get to do more than take a drive around the outskirts of Bosque Chapultepec, the “central park” of the city. Here there are lakes, museums of modern art and the Museum of Anthropology, an amusement park, and Chapultepec Castle. This castle, now the national museum of Mexican history, has served as residence to both presidents and emperors, but mostly as a military academy. It was from the bluffs surrounding the castle that the famed “Los Ninos” wrapped themselves in the Mexican flag and hurled themselves to their deaths as the Americans took the city during the American invasion of Mexico, 1846-1848. As we drove along the iron fence surrounding the park, we saw an exhibit of Nordic photography, “Norway: Powered by Nature” that accompanied the recent visit of the Norwegian Prince and Princess last month. (Ale was a principal organizer of the PR campaign related to their visit!) I’m sorry Bob didn’t get to spend more time enjoying them, as he’s quite a good photographer himself. But, these wouldn’t be the only photos we would not have time for; we’d also have to shelve a tentative trip to an exhibit in the Centro by David La Chapelle, “The Delirium of Reason,” the following day in order to make time for a day trip out of town.

Before getting on the road to San Angel on Saturday, we stopped into Califa for some “tacos al pastor,” by far one of the tastiest types of tacos found only in Mexico City. They unique nature of these tacos is that they are filled with meat shaved from a rotisserie spit, in the same way as the Greek gyro or Turkish kabob. This technique of cooking was brought to Mexico City from Lebanese immigrants. (Carlos Slim, one of the top 3 richest men in the world, is a Lebanese Mexican.) Tacos al Pastor include juicy pork shaved from the spit, parsley, onion and a slice of pineapple, topped with lime juice and salsa. RIDICULOUS is how good they are. Just writing about them now is making my mouth water. Again, Bob and Yoonhee were having a fiesta of the taste buds. Afterwards, we finally made our way to San Angel for our Saturday afternoon. We meandered through the weekly arts and crafts market set up in the two little parks located in that old cobblestoned neighborhood. This neighborhood, like nearby Coyoacan, was originally a suburb far beyond the city center. Now, these quaint neighborhoods are more like a colonial oasis in the midst of the urban jungle. While there, Ale bought a blouse and Bob bought a couple of wall hangings from the locals. We headed back and had to select a restaurant again for dinner—not always an easy task in a city full of great offerings. We settled on Il Postino, a lovely little Italian place with and outdoor café seating on the Cibeles fountain at the Plaza Madrid. There Bob ordered some giant mutton on a bone. The pictures of him digging into this thing will crack you up. (Did I mention Bob is a confirmed eater?)

Our last full day consisted of a trip well outside the city limits to a little village called Tepoztlan, about an hour away. Since Mexico City lies in a basin in the middle of a mountain range, it’s necessary to do some windy mountain driving to get out of the city. Once up there, Bob and Yoonhee were a bit surprised, as I first was, at the beauty of the countryside outside the city. Giant pine trees lined the highway, reminiscent of the outer limits of Yosemite. Tepoztlan is also cradled in a small basin surrounded by a wall of sheer rock face. It is such a nifty and magical place that it was the site of native life as far back as 1,500 BCE. More recent inhabitants, from ca. 1,100 CE, constructed a temple pyramid on the top ledge of one of these nearby craggy mountains. The high perch kept it from being destroyed after Cortez and friends razed the town below to the ground when the inhabitants refused to submit adequately. Taking the hour hike up the mountain side to the pyramid is one of the premier attractions of the town, along with the many shops, restaurants, and local “spiritual” offerings—“want your aura read?” White-robed, beaded hippies can be seen wandering the streets, waiting for a message from the Great Spirit of the Mountain (or some such shit). The small temple park at the top features a glorious view of the surrounding rock formations and the town below. It’s a great place to have a picnic and read a book for the afternoon.

After parking, we visited the grounds of the old convent in town, built in the late 16th Century, then stopped for a coffee and snack, before strolling down the main road toward the pyramid. When they looked up and saw how high and steep the climb was, doubt began to set in. Though this is not excessively physically challenging hike for the healthy, the unfortunate fact was that by the time Sunday had rolled around, Bob had taken on the brunt of the cold virus that had been plaguing Sunshine and Yoonhee days earlier and he was feeling pretty darn lousy. After we got to the foot of the mountain under the trees, we decided the pyramid would have to wait another day. Instead we sat in the shade and ate our packed lunches, chatting and people watching, before heading back into town and back into the big city.

The best meal of all, if I must say, was our dinner that last night: Miguelito’s secret special NJ-Mexican pasta sauce with salad and garlic bread. Unfortunately, Bob was so stuffed-up he couldn’t taste a thing—though this did not prevent him from eating! He was coherent enough to help me organize my music collection onto a back up drive, which was much appreciated by a technical idiot like me. Sunshine didn’t have the easiest time getting to sleep that night and wailed for quite some time. At times during the visit, Little Miss Sunshine behaved more like Little Miss Crankypants, but I think she still enjoyed her tour of Mexico City. I’m sure her having a cold didn’t help. Still, her antics certainly gave Ale and I a wake-up call as to what we need to expect in the coming year. The joys of parenthood await!

The next day we parted, Ale and I for a week in Nicaragua, and Sunshine and her ‘rents back to Philly. Details of Nicaragua to follow…

Miguelito Got Married!!

It all started the previous year when Ale and I spent our first Thanksgiving on the beaches of the Yucatan. (See the previous Yucatan blog for details.) We said to each other, “If we end up getting married, let’s do it here on these gorgeous beaches. (Yes, we were contemplating the possibilities only a few months after meeting!) By spring the following year we had decided that a wedding was, indeed, in order. My thinking was that since I have a week off for Thanksgiving and people in the States have at least a four day weekend, it would work. It would give my NJ friends and family an excuse to come sun themselves in the Caribbean as winter began to take hold of them. Unfortunately, this plan backfired. At the time people were looking to book their flights last summer, gas prices were still spiking and flights were as high as $1,500 a pop, which was quite steep for a four day weekend. People began begging off, saying they would prefer to come at a later time when tickets were cheaper and they had more time to spend with us. Though disappointing, I certainly understood. I was also admittedly worried about everyone coming at once and me being too busy to spend time with them sufficiently. Nonetheless, I also admit I grew tired of having to explain to people, when they learned no one from NJ was coming, that I was not an orphan with no friends from NJ. Happily, my friend Tim and his lovely wife Jennifer stepped up to represent NJ and prove I had a life there. They ended up solving the problem of the unfavorable plane fare to vacation time ratio by extending their stay in Mexico for almost two weeks, creating for themselves a sort of second honeymoon. It was really great having them there. As for the rest of the NJ contingency, let me tell you what a great time you missed…

Having both already spent a ton of dough on previous (practice) weddings, and having recently blown all our savings on our apartment purchase and furniture, our focus this time was keeping it simple and inexpensive. We figured we’d get married on the beach in a barebones ceremony, go to dinner at this high end restaurant down the road, The Mezzanine, then party at their Friday night dance event. We’d simply tell people of our plans and those who wanted to/could join us would do so. Pretty cut and dry. Well, so we thought.

Getting married on the beach proved to be more difficult, and potentially expensive, than we expected. The cabana we were booked referred us to their wedding coordinator who talked about packages including tropical flowers for $500 and a “site fee” of $750. I was shocked that there would be a charge for use of the beach because it is a well known fact that all beaches in Mexico are all legally open to the public. I couldn’t understand why while staying in their hotel it was free for us to read, swim, walk, play Frisbee, sunbath or run naked on the beach, but the minute we stood with some friends on the beach to recite some words and sign some papers it was going to cost us $750. No thanks! We were pleased when the Mezzanine said they would allow us to do it on their beach for free. Unfortunately, trouble began brewing with those folks too. At first, we told them we were expecting 10-12 people. Ale didn’t think her parents were going to make it either, and so we thought it would be just us with a few friends. But, Thanksgiving in Tulum has a very nice ring to it, and many of my friends from work began letting us know they would indeed be joining us for the nuptials. Ale’s family confirmed. Then more of Ale’s friends joined the list late. Two weeks before the wedding we added all the recent confirmations up and discovered the total was pushing 35, including us. When we called the Mezzanine to let them know of the change, they began back peddling fast. They had seemed concerned when our total had crossed 20 weeks earlier and began emphasizing they would have trouble serving us all at once and seating us together. Fifteen days before the wedding, when they heard we had surpassed thirty, they simply let us know that they would not be able to accommodate us and wished us “good luck.” Yikes!

Ale and I were so freaked out at this latest turn of events that we went into denial and didn’t even talk about it for two days. Finally, Ale got into gear and began calling cabanas/restaurants on the Tulum beach strip. After many disappointments we finally found a place that we thought would work: Om. Om is a new cabana/restaurant in Tulum. We saw it being built there last year and knew that it looked pretty cool. We also had visited Club Om in Playa del Carmen and knew it was a well run establishment. All we needed to do was meet with the managers and sort out the details upon our arrival.

We flew into Cancun on Monday morning the week before the scheduled event. I rented a car—and after remembering the $2,500 deductible I had to pay after a rental car accident last Christmas—purchased the full insurance. We collected our friends, Walter, Martha and Vail, who had also arrived that afternoon as well and headed south to paradise. Martha and Vail were treating themselves to an all inclusive resort up the road from us and would be joining us for the wedding. Walter was staying with our main crew on the beach in Tulum and continued on with us to our first stop, the civil registry. Now this was a meeting I entered with great fear and trepidation. The reason was that despite many attempts, Ale and I had been unable to locate my apostilled (internationally certified) birth certificate. Most sites on the internet, including wedding planners in the Mayan Riviera said that this document was a requirement for marriage in Mexico. Ale had spoken with someone in the Tulum office who had assured her that it was not needed in the state of Quintana Roo, where Tulum is located. And even though (at my badgering) she had called and confirmed this 26 times, I was still afraid that we were not going to walk in there and have them say the person on the phone either didn’t say that, or unfortunately had given us the wrong information and of course you need it you idiots didn’t you read all the available information on the internet about getting married in Mexico?? To my utter joy (and Walter’s who was eager to get to the beach) we suffered no such bad news and were out of there with papers in order inside of 15 minutes! All that was needed was our blood tests and physicals, scheduled for the next day.

After checking into our sweet bungalow suite on the beach at La Nueva Vida, we grabbed Tim and Jennifer from cabana Lamar and headed to Om for dinner. After eating a delicious meal, which Tim was particularly satisfied with, Ale and I met with Manuel and Massimo, the managers to iron out the wedding/reception details. They offered to set us up on the beach as we requested, suggested we go with a buffet, including soup, salad, shrimp crevice, steak medallions, lemon chicken, and pasta for our vegetarian friends. They decided to close the restaurant for the evening, and even offered to let us use our IPod in their sound system, which we figured would not only be cheaper but allow us total control over the music. By the end of the evening, all the details were falling quickly into place and we could settle down and enjoy ourselves for our pre-wedding honeymoon. Our first order of business was to catch up with my posse back at the sand covered restaurant/bar at La Zebra, the cabana next to ours where Will, Tina, Jackie, Walter and (eventually) Jim Weathers were staying in an apartment cabana. We had left Walter there hours earlier as he was happily accepting his free welcome Margarita. By the time we arrived to introduce our NJ friends to my DF friends, all my DF pals at La Zebra were thoroughly “happily welcomed” and enjoying themselves immensely. Tina, in particular was in rare and hilarious (intoxicated) form. Not one to be dissuaded from a late night cocktail, we joined the fray, ending sometime later laying on the deck cushions in the ocean breeze under an amazingly clear jungle sky, many of us chatting arm in arm. It was a very pleasant end to the beginning of our wedding week.

Breakfast on the beach, followed by swimming, sunning, reading, chatting, walking, Frisbee, and afternoon cocktails and snacks were the orders of the day throughout the week. Dinners, drinks and after-hour parties at our suite balcony were the orders of the night. It was truly a relaxing and fun week in the paradise that is Tulum. Since I’ve already explained in detail the jungle, ruins and cenotes of the Tulum area in a previous blog, I won’t go into that sort of detail again. Suffice to say that we did many of the same activities again. One activity that we did not do was the “Hidden Worlds” cenote park which is apparently an all day affair that includes jungle canopy zip line tours and all sorts of other cool stuff. I’m glad in a way we didn’t get to it because it leaves me something to do next time we go—(hear that Steve!?). Some new twists included the discovery of a secluded bar at the end of the strip that featured darts, ping-pong and pool tables which we enjoyed twice. Another new experience was an expensive but delicious dinner at Posada Marguerita, where we had stayed, but not eaten at the year before. The food there comes from a set menu with limited choices described in person by the owner at each table. While many of us found this personal attention charming, Jackie, who is a finicky eater was annoyed and didn’t get why she just couldn’t see a menu. We all got a laugh when the Italian owner, not hurting for any business, responded curtly to her demand to select her meal from a menu by saying, “You want to eat here tonight?—YOU WILL LISTEN TO ME!” She did, and I imagine she was quite satisfied with her meal as were the rest of us, which was one of essentially four combination choices of fresh homemade pastas and freshly caught seafood. Since the restaurant could not accommodate a table of 10, Tim, Jennifer, Ale and I sat at a table away from the main group, which I thoroughly appreciated, having another chance to enjoy our friends who had traveled so far for our special occasion. Another notable event took place in town at an Argentinean restaurant in town where we congregated in our biggest group (besides the wedding, of course) for a “Thanksgiving” dinner. At this point, Ryan and Lydie, Jimmy Weathers, Tim Marlowe, Ashley, and Will’s visiting friends JT and Allison and had all arrived. I was filled with joy as I sat with my beautiful wife to be and so many good friends, old and new, stuffing myself with grilled Argentinean meat and vegetables AND watching the Eagles destroy the Cardinals. (Unfortunately, this sporting result would not be repeated in the NFC Championship game...) It was one of my favorite Thanksgivings ever!

Days before the wedding we headed back to Cancun airport to pick up Ale’s parents. We brought them each a special gift, a bottle of vodka for him and a bottle of whisky for her. We serendipitously ran into Tim Marlowe when we were there and threw him in our shuttle back to Tulum. While Tim and I talked, Ale’s mom grew concerned about my driving speed and lack of focus on the road. As she commented on this, Ale poked me in the shoulder from the back. “Knock it off!” I told her. When she explained the reason why, I responded that perhaps we should pull over and grab her bottle of whisky out of the back so she could take a shot and relax. When her mom heard the translation of this, she held up her plastic water bottle for me to see and said, “What do you think is in here?!” The sweet old couple had been drinking during the entire plane ride! Her father made a similar comment when we stopped by their bungalow on the beach later that night to check on them. It’s nice here, I told them in my lame Spanish, you can get up and read on the beach tomorrow. “Read?!” he responded indignantly, I’ve read enough over the last 40 years, I just drink now!” Gotta love this guy.

After a week of fun in the sun (the weather was great all week, unlike the year before) the big day arrived. The wedding was to begin at 5:15 on Friday evening so we could stand on the beach with the sun splashing some color in the sky. As luck would have it, this was the only day that was slightly cloudy and as the afternoon wore on it became increasingly cloudy and began to drizzle a little. As we debated whether or not to move the event indoors the decision was taken out of our hands when the judge and the two Mexican witnesses, our friends Sonia and Enrique, were late arriving. Ale had spoken to the judge earlier in the week, confirming the start time of the ceremony. He told us he would be there a half an hour early to go over the details and logistics. When Ale called to find out what the problem was, he defended himself by saying, “You told me the wedding would be at 5:15.” Ale said, “yes, but it’s now 5:30!” Typical Mexican time management. He and Sonia and Enrique were all there minutes later, but by this time darkness had descended and it was obvious the ceremony would take place in the restaurant. Still, we still consider ourselves to have gotten married on the beach as the restaurant was literally 20 yards from the edge of the water and the only thing separating us from the beach was the plastic window they roll down the edge of the deck to keep the ocean wind off the tables.

The ceremony was brief and simple, exactly as we had wanted. A brief reading of the responsibilities, love and respect of man and wife toward each other in the state of marriage, followed by some “I do’s” (or “Si, quieros” which Ale still makes fun of me for slightly mispronouncing) and the signatures and fingerprints of us and the witnesses. As it was all in Spanish, I couldn’t follow most of it very well. But, it didn’t matter much anyway. I was captivated by how absolutely gorgeous Ale looked in her beautiful 30 dollar dress, (she is so proud of herself for finding that steal!)with her hair done up with the extra hair extension added. Even though we had been planning this event for over six months, I was suddenly overcome with love and happiness as I gazed at her in the candle light. Then we sat down at our respective tables for the dinner, which was, honestly, impressively tasty. Afterwards, it was time for a speech or two. I went up and gave a thank you to all, and offered my sentiment that the wedding day was important and special, but what really mattered was the live we would build together. When I got to the part about having children, her father leapt up from his chair and gave a rousing “yeah!” The fact that I said all this in Spanish nearly brought Ale to tears.

Her father wasn’t the only one interjecting with comments and cheers. My good buddy Jim Weathers (aka Tim Walters) was about as fired up as I’ve ever seen him. I actually first noticed his elevated state hours earlier when I stopped in the apartment next door to pick up the flowers our friends Vic and Carolina had picked up for us. When I inquired about his altered state, I was told by those around him that he had purposely decided to get “beered-up.” (I can only guess this is some sort of British expression.) I told him to knock it off as the wedding was several hours away. He clearly didn’t listen to me. As we chatted in the restaurant having cocktails and waiting for the guests, judge and witnesses, Jimmy was already on a roll and raising eyebrows from those already there. “What’s the over-under on how long it takes him to start singing the old Scottish folksong “No Way Never?” I asked Tim and Vic as we eyed him from across the bar. (Usually this never ending round of a song starts very late in the evenings—or early in the mornings.) When he approached me singing this tune less than two minutes later, I knew we were in trouble. As I stood gazing at my beautiful bride a short time later I became momentarily distracted by the rumble of under breathed cursing from behind the table. There was Jim, struggling to balance himself on a chair and record the momentous event on video. Luckily, he managed not to fall. Later, during the meal he shouted out a toast, “Mike, I toast to your stupidity!” What!? People around him asked. “I mean, you’re the best one to make a choice I would regret as I see Ale is not a mistake…” Enough! People told him, you’re just making it worse! I’m still not sure exactly idea what he was trying to say, though I’m certain his intentions were well founded. Perhaps an expression of something he felt about marriage in general. Several people later told us that as he got himself “beered-up” all afternoon he kept saying that weddings made him extremely nervous. Everyone’s reminders that he was not the one getting married and thus needed not relieve any cold feet were offered without effect. He also tried to offer some commentary as I began my speech, but Will quickly interceded in no uncertain terms, “Tim, SHUT UP.” And he got the message long enough for Will and I to make our speeches. Amazingly, he remained on his feet for the remainder of the evening, even managing to dance and hold Sonia’s baby Mila without incident. And despite his extreme state of inebriation, he still managed to maintain enough of his roguish English charm well enough as to have one of Ale’s cute friends express interest. He, on the other hand, was too far gone to notice. He ended his night hours later, back on the deck of our bungalow, falling out of the hammock and then passing out in our wedding bed. He was in rare form, for sure, playing the role of the “drunken uncle at the wedding” to perfection. To thank him, I took my clippers and gave him nice 1x2 inch bald patch on the back of his head. We all got laughs out of that for a couple of weeks.

After I finished my remarks I turned the floor over to Will. I was glad to have him be the one to make the speech. He and I have become quite close over the past year and a half, and after many, many hours hanging out in our apartment, partying out on the town, chillin’ at the beach and elsewhere, he better than anyone had a window into Ale and my relationship. On the other hand, Will and I also enjoy busting each other’s chops, and I was bracing myself for what was sure to be a roasting of me in the midst of his wedding speech. My apprehension only increased the day of the wedding when I saw him in the La Zebra restaurant with JT working on the speech for the better part of the afternoon. He did not disappoint:

Love Lessons I’ve Learned From Mike and Ale

Lesson #1: How do I know she loves me? She shaves my back.

“Bebe, Bebe, it’s me. Are you listening? I need you to listen. This is important. Did the maid throw away my toenails? She did? BEBE, you know I was saving those! They were huge, I could have chewed on those for a week.!” This is and actual phone call from Mike to Ale. I know this because I was sitting in the car next to Mike dry heaving as it was happening. It was shocking. But, most shocking of all was that Ale was actually apologizing. She knew the importance of these toenails and she shared Mike’s loss. This, is love. There is no affection deeper than that of a woman who loves a man who chews on his own toenails. It wouldn’t be proper to discuss all of Mike’s jarring habits at dinner but what is important to note is that Ale puts up with all of them. She even encourages them. She knows that the man she loves is at times…very gross. She knows that he is not ever politically correct. She knows that she will spend the rest of her life avoiding the eye contact of strangers in fancy restaurants. And she knows that this is what also makes him honest and sincere and true to himself. She also knows that these qualities will make him an incredible husband and she knows that she is very lucky.

Lesson #2: She thinks I’m funny, even when no one else is laughing.

If anyone is in doubt of Ale’s love for Mike, all you need to do is watch her when Mike tells a joke. She starts to laugh even before he has finished his first sentence. She glows with pride at his wit even when no one else is sure if what he has just said is even a joke. And she doesn’t just offer a little laugh, but a hearty, throw back your head and roar laugh. Mike, as someone who enjoys the spotlight, be thankful that as of this day you have forever found a willing and captive audience.

Lesson #3: She loves my friends because they love me.

I love Mike. I myself have shaved his back (although I never planned on telling anyone about it). Ale knows that we all love Mike, that we think he IS funny, and that we have all been enchanted by the cult of Mike Hennessy. Our devotion to her husband means that we are all part of this new family being created today. We may all be a little rough around the edges, but don’t doubt for a minute our love for Mike. In return, we know we will always be welcomed into this new Hennessy home. And we should all feel lucky. There are very few places where you will feel as comfortable and as loved.

Lesson #4: She makes me a better person.

Mike and Ale have given me hope. Through them I have seen that maybe there is such a thing as being “soul mates.” There just might be someone out there who makes you a better person simply because you are with them. This is true for Mike and Ale. As individuals they are deep and thoughtful and full of love. But, as a couple these qualities are magnified. They bring out the best in each other, and they also tolerate the less desirable qualities. Chewing on toenails doesn’t really matter when your husband is the funniest man on the planet. I have been lucky enough to watch their relationship grow from the beginning at match.com to the caring and devoted relationship it has become. Thank you both for providing us all with a real life example of what love really is.

Tomorrow at the beach, take a close look. Not at the beauty of Tulum, but at Mike’s back. Examine the attention to detail. Examine how close Ale is willing to go to that southern point where back hair turns into something else entirely. This is the work of someone who loves her partner so deeply that she is willing to put herself at risk. For all of us looking for love, this is what it looks like.

Needless to say, this speech got its fair share of “ha-ha’s” “ews” and “ahhs.” Ale had a hard time translating it to her mother and others later, who couldn’t actually believe he had covered some of the topics he had. Afterwards, Marlowe and some others spoke a few kind words. Ale’s father stood to serenade us a cappella, which was a quite moving experience. Afterwards, we moved to the party portion of the night, with some bouquet tossing and cake cutting interspersed as you can imagine. Jackie had done a fine job of creating the wedding play list and along with Tina, Martha and Vail did kept the dance floor going for almost two hours after the restaurant had originally told us they would stay open. Ryan rapped the entire song, word for work, of “Ice-Ice Baby” while Walter took 87 pictures of a super hot friend of Ale’s who had shown up in some sort of Jazzercise outfit. A pair of unexpected guests generated quite a stir when they stumbled into the bar and proceeded to tell anyone who would listen that they were having an illicit Mexican vacation affair, he being married and the best friend of her father. The next day the manager told us she topped of the night by puking on the floor just after we all left.

The wedding all came to its final conclusion many hours later, with a rump of our crew drinking the wee hours away on our deck in the ocean air, laughing and joking and taking pictures of Ale’s hair extension placed in various places on their bodies, before stumbling off alone or in pairs, leaving us two newlyweds to pass out next to each other (no consummation that evening) and wait for the morning to begin the rest of our lives together.

PS. The next day, Vic and Carolina had breakfast in our hotel’s restaurant. All the other guests were abuzz about the crazy party that had been going on at the beach front suite until 4:30 am. “Yeah, we heard it, did you?” “Yes we did…and THE PROFANITY!!!” I could only laugh knowing that I was surely a prime offender. After two days of gentle recovery on the beach we headed back to the DF to our new life as a happily married couple, ready to begin our work on starting a family. To be contined…

You can also view LOTS of pictures of our really fun and exciting wedding (and some of our wedding week) at:http://www.flickr.com/photos/miguelito2066/sets/72157614928775445/ Use the slideshow feature for best viewing.

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