Blogging from a Far Away Country

The birds woke me up. Their cries began early in the morning. There were short sounds, long sounds, high pitched sounds, and many other sounds that are too hard to explain with just words. The birds went on with their squeals and warbles for many hours, not stopping to wonder if they were disturbing the humans who had been slumbering below. After all, what can a human do to something he can not see, but only hear?

By the time I had gotten out of bed, Yanet had finished putting breakfast together. This morning, eggs were served, along with fresh fruit and bread. There were many varieties of fruit; the basket included bananas, strawberries, apples, watermelon, pineapple, along with all the other fruits you could name off the top of your head. In the bread basket there were croissants, muffins, and an assortment of pan dulces (sweet breads).

After breakfast, we all went down to the beach to go snorkeling. We brought our equipment from the house to the water, a walk that took thirty seconds total. Everyone donned their masks and snorkels, along with bathing suits and flippers. That is, everyone except Mellisa's mom who was not coming. Only one of our party was not wearing a bathing suit. My younger brother, Dylan, was testing out his mask and flippers in our swimming pool. As he was leaving the pool he was forced to take large, dramatic steps because of the flippers on his feet. The bathing suit he was wearing was, unfortunately, a bit small for him. In the middle of his step his bathing suit split down the middle. He walked, hunched over, to his room, with flippers still on, to get some pants. These he wore while snorkeling. At least it happened while still in the house and not on the beach in front of dozens of people. (Nobody cared that it was actually my spare bathing suit that Dylan was wearing at the time of this incident.)

Playa La Ropa was too crowded to enjoy snorkeling, in fact, had it not been crowded, there would have been hardly anything to see because the area near the beach is far too polluted for fish to live comfortably. We left our shoe on a big rock with lots of holes in it, ideal for leaving shoes in, that was situated on the beach. We entered the water with our masks on our faces and our flippers on our feet. We brought four boogie boards to rest on while in the water, if we got tired. (If you don't know what a boogie board is, then Google it!) We swam away from the beach, glancing down at the sparse sea life whenever we suspected it might be there. After a thirty minute swim we reached Las Gatas Beach. Las Gatas is only accessable by water taxi or swimming so we thought that it would be almost deserted. We were wrong. There were hundreds of people in the water. Perhaps the water taxi became a lot cheaper or a chunk of the population decided to become more athletic, but whatever the reason, it would not be a good snorkeling spot.

Las Gatas beach is a short stretch of sand with various family-owned restaurants behind it. The small area of water has a stone wall as a boundary. It is said that an Aztec king wanted a place for his daughter to play in the water without the huge waves and sea critters that come from the ocean. This king had a huge wall built to cut off the animals from entering the area and to block most of the waves.

To avoid the large groups of people in the water, we had to swim around the rock wall into the open water of the bay. There were no other people there. However, just below the surface, there were thousands of little fish, big fish, blue fish, red fish, and all other types of sea critters you could think of. I will name a few of these things I saw, but only a few. I could fill a hundred pages with what I saw in the first five minutes, but I will summarize.

A school of 30+ fish kept following our group. They were small, about 2 or 3 inches long. They had long yellow bodies with a black stripe along their backs. This school followed us from the corner of the rock wall, to the middle of the rock wall, and back to where we all started.

While we were looking around under the water, I found that the little fish following us had become distracted. They were trying to cram themselves all together on a big white spot on a rock. They wiggled and squirmed to try to touch what I guessed was their mouths to the rock. This led me to believe that there was some form of food present on the rock, and they all wanted a share. The way they all darted in and out and became a mass of black and yellow was amazing. They looked a bit like serpents, all coiled together, and moving quickly. Then, out of nowhere (actually, it was out from behind a rock), a huge blue fish charged the little ones. The small ones scattered everywhere, giving the appearance of an explosion. This foot-long blue fish circled the rock until the little fish returned to it, becoming a mass of yellow and black again. As expected, the blue fish charged them again and they scattered. The little fish continued to try to eat and the big fish continued to scare them off. They were still doing this when I left.

Because we had left our school of following fish behind, another school was obligated to follow us in the previous school's stead. These fish were colored pink and red. They were slightly fatter than our previous acquaintances, but their most striking feature was their glowing butts. They had what looked like an orb of light just in front of their tails. This group stayed with us until the first school realized that we had left, and caught up with us.

I sorely wish I had a waterproof camera to bring. I know that Isaac would have loved to see pictures.

Once we had seen enough we swam back to La Ropa beach, retrieved our shoes from the convenient rock, and returned to the house. Once there we got in the swimming pool for a little while, then ate lunch.

Every Sunday in Zihuatenejo there is a fiesta en el centro (party on the square). We decided to attend and see how the Mexicans partied. We took a taxi to the basketball court, where the fiesta was located. Once there, we experienced the Mexican craze for corn. There were corn tortillas, corn tamales, corn taco shells, corn on the cob, and then just plain corn.

After half an hour of observation we decided that Mexican parties were just like most American parties, dull. There was not much to do there once you ate, unless you wanted to listen to the music and talk. There were some people juggling fire, but they were not very good. One of them threw his flaming baton off the stage and, instead of catching it, it landed in the front row of the audience's seats. Fortunately, not many people were watching him and those who were had enough brains to sit in the back, so nobody was hurt.

We left the fiesta and walked to the market. This consisted of family owned stalls and small buildings filled with tons of miscellaneous items. The shop keepers all spoke English fluently and offered their wares to us in a language we all understood. The first shop we entered had beautiful wood carvings, jewelry, statues, masks, and other things, all of which were incredible (we were told that they were all hand made). My brother and I both bought hats there. The original price was 280 pesos (roughly $28). This was hugely overpriced, but in Mexico you are expected to haggle. My father and I were able to convince the shop keeper to lower the price to 200 pesos ($20). We proceeded to the next stall where we saw many of the same items. It was later explained to me that most of the shops on the same street corner are run by huge families so the artist who make these beautiful things give them to their children to sell. In one shop we saw two masks side by side. The one on the left was the face of a red man with horns. We asked the shop keeper who it was supposed to be. "The devil," he replied, "my father-in-law." We laughed and asked who the mask on the right was supposed to be. This mask was a skull with horns and a fish tail coming out of its head. "My mother-in-law" the man answered. In total we bought 2 hats, a hammock, and a very pretty blue painted plate that is a replica of an Aztec calendar.

We took a taxi back to the house. After we arrived we had a bit of ice cream. It was late and there was nothing else to do, so we all went to bed.