México lindo

  

Chris had booked us into some cabañas on the beach at Villa del mar, a hamlet south of Puerto Vallarta. So we left behind Vallarta, its multi-storey condominiums, multi-million dollar villas, night clubs and bars with tribute acts (the real Robbie Williams is scheduled to perform later in October at the hideously sprawling Vidanta World resort). This brief excursion reminded me of the colours, sounds, landscapes and people of Mexico that so entranced a young man from Ipswich in the early 1970s.

El Pueblito restaurant, El Tuito.

 

The only road south took us up into the hills, tropical forest gradually giving way to an admixture of pine forest. Our first stop, for lunch, was El Tuito (from the Nahuatl teutlan, meaning place of the gods), population 3,850, the capital of Cabo Corrientes municipality. We joined Mexican families for Sunday lunch at El Pueblito, a large open-air restaurant on top of a hill with views to the mountains beyond. Now, in Vallarta you can eat Italian, French, English, Cantonese, Vietnamese and so on, but you have to search hard for Mexican food. Not so in El Tuito where Mexican hearty is the only cuisine on offer. First came a shrimp broth, sweet and savoury, with a single carefully dissected sweet and juicy shrimp. Then carne asada (grilled steak) with guacamole, refried beans, a baked chile and sweetly fried chile ancho (bell pepper), gratefully eaten with hand-made tortillas. Others in our group lunched on sizzling chicken fajitas, a half pineapple stuffed with shrimp and other goodies, or ribs.

My carne asada.

 

The plaza of El Tuito.

 For most travellers, El Tuito is a place to stop for food as they head south to larger towns and eventually to Manzanillo, a major port, and beyond to the steel town of Lázaro Cárdenas or the resorts of Zihuatanejo and Acapulco. For the weary, there is a not very inviting hotel on the main road. None of this invites the traveller to explore the town. But a slightly absurd divided road, two lanes either side, with minimal traffic, leads to the town proper, and the heart of even the smallest Mexican town, a bustling plaza, with its inevitable kiosko (band stand). On one side is the ayuntamiento (town hall), where residents queue with their paperwork (much administration in Mexico is still paper-based) for important trámites (procedures/official matters).

The ayuntamiento of El Tuito.

When we stopped in the plaza on our way home for lunch, it was full of the usual activity: children running around or on their bikes, locals relaxing on a bench, patient residents outside the town hall. There was also a detachment of soldiers. Nowadays, one usually sees members of the armed forces riding in pickup trucks wearing body armour and balaclavas and carrying serious-looking firearms. But on this day, the soldiers were in fatigues and one was loading a strimmer into their truck. Chris surmised that they were recruiting. The increased presence of the army, to little effect in terms of public safety but increasingly visible, is a very recent development. The previous president gave the military control of airports, sea ports, customs posts, railway construction, the distribution of medicines, hotels, and no doubt more enterprises than I can remember. This makes for rich generals who will support the government, but whose power, equally, a civilian ruler would challenge at great peril.

El Patio de Mario

 

Lunch on our return was at the Patio de Mario, a decidedly traditional Mexican restaurant, under the arcades in the plaza. The eponymous Mario was sitting outside enjoying a cigarette. He informed us that the building in which his staff cook and serve dates to 1778. After ushering us inside, Mario brought us a plate of deliciously sweet pineapple, a bowl of tortilla chips, two salsas and jocoque, a thick fermented cream to be eaten with salt, chiles or added to soups and so on. He then returned to his seat outside, leaving four young women to take care of us. I could not resist a tortilla soup, strips of crisp tortilla with a small mountain of avocado, cheese, sweetcorn peppers, seasoned with good squeezes of lime. Kourtney had that traditional western Mexico dish, birria, a long-cooked stew of shredded beef or goat. David’s beef quesadillas were accompanied by a hearty beef broth.

El Patio de Mario, interior.

 

Our bill came with little packs of “English mints”. I commented that these were very appropriate since we are English. The young women asked me whether Spanish is spoken in England. I replied that we speak English but not the same English as the Americans. To make the point, I referred to the differences between Castilian Spanish and the language of Mexico (using the Castilian lisping of c and z as an example). One of the girls became very excited: she thought she had heard Castilian spoken, but had never met English people before. So we left in a buzz of excitement, bidding Mario, who was now seated outside chatting over a beer with other men, a fond farewell and promising to return.

 

From our lunch at El Pueblito, once we had left behind the partially finished buildings that characterize most Mexican towns, we found ourselves in a long wide valley of lush vegetation. Settlements are few and far between. Llano Grande, a short distance from El Tuito is a cattle-raising Indigenous settlement. Los Conejos has an estimated population of three! From there, it was vegetation and the occasional cow until Mayto (population fewer than 200) until, after about 40kms or so, the paved road gives way to a carretera de terracería (dirt road) along which you bump until you each Villa del Mar (population 278, of which 157 men).

Looking north from Cabañas Cielito.

 

Apart from our comfortable air-conditioned cabins and a good restaurant and bar, I was reminded of places I had visited on road trips with friends in the 1970s. This is not the Mexico of resort towns like Puerto Vallarta, Acapulco or Cancún. For 12kms. from the rocky cliffs to our north the beach curved gently  south to a point far in the distance, almost entirely empty of people except for one family group, and the odd dog walker or fisher.

The view to the south.

 

Apart from the sounds, colours, smells and flavours of the places we visited, the phrases that tell you that you are in Mexico also conjure up many memories. Con permiso (“excuse me”) is frequently heard when passing somebody on the pavement, the proper response being propio (not really translatable, but roughly “you are welcome”). Ándale (alternatively órale) is a universally useful phrase. It can convey encouragement (“go on”, “go for it”) or confirm that you have been understood or are willing to do something (e.g. when a waiter checks your order, or somebody is unsure whether you wish to do something). When you greet somebody, or when you part: que le vaya bien (have a good day). In a restaurant you will hear many times le retiro su plato? (may I take away your plate/have you finished?); if you are not careful, a brief respite from eating may encourage a waiter to whisk way your unfinished meal.