Beach Excellent

Memory of the Beach

Ixtapa, Mexico.  A lot of fun to get there.  Dave Burrows and I flew down to spend about five days with Rogelio Navarro and his son Rogelio.  There is money in Mexico.  The top percentage of people have it, the rest of the 97% of the population don't have it.  The Navarro's had it.

Mexico City Aeropuerto

Dave and I took one suitcase apiece, got off the airplane in Mexico City, then got over in another little hanger/type area to wait on our other airplane.  I have been told that most people fly to Mexico City and take a bus that uses a couple of hours to get there.  We were going to take a plane.

We think they call us.  When they came over to the waiting area and took Dave and I by the shoulder and pointed out at a little prop plane sitting on the runway, and indicated that was where we were going.  A man stood at the front of the plane, looked Dave over, told him to sit up toward the front.  Then he had about seven other people, told them to sit toward the front.  Then he looked at me.  A long, long look.  He had me take my bag (yes, they didn't carry them) to the front of the plane, in front of the wing, in front of the cockpit and had me stow the bag there.

Then I was escorted to the rear of the plane. He pointed with a great deal of vociferousness, and directed me to the back seat of the plane.  You must understand, this was a small plane.  It could hold 10 or 12 people, and there were eight of them, in the first eight seats (2 wide) or four rows of seats.  Then there were 2 empty rows, and one little seat in the back, that the back head rest was a net that held the luggage in, over the top of the seat.  It was all mine.  It took every inch of that seat plus four inches of the other seat to hold me in place.  The seat belt, wouldn't even begin to fit.  I urgently hollered at the flight attendant (who was simply the man who was seating us by weight and would get off the plane in just a minute) and pointed at the no seat belt situation I was in, and not ready for.  The engines had fired up by this time, and hearing was something you had done in the hanger, not in the plane.   I shuffled and pointed urgently, showed him the seat belt problem, and was sure I had the look on my face of one trapped with the teeth of a grizzly bear at my neck.

Then it was an epiphany.  A light slammed on so bright (in my minds eye) and permeated the noise inside the rocking little plane, as he backed away, toward the door, he turned, looked around him, looked at me, shrugged his shoulders, and saluted goodbye.  All of this took two seconds, the door was fastened, and the plane began to move.  And I realized, it really didn't make a bit of difference.

The flight to Ixtapa was short, we landed, my butt in the floor on landing and stopping, trying to get back in the seat, knowing the aircraft had managed the flight, although the plane was nose up the entire trip, and boom we were on the ground, wet with sweat, the temperature outside a balmy 97 degrees, the palm trees standing still and the ocean rocking back and forth through the trees.

Red Type  Translates = Long Frigging Ways

We gathered our stuff from the bow of the plane, headed inside, the heat sealed airport, looked around and found Rogelio Jr. looking all happy to see us there.  He was a big guy, about 6'2" big broad shoulders, an elegant and young looking face, pressed slacks, white shirt, gold chain about his neck, and he came over and shook Dave's hand, gave me a big hug, and we piled into his Lincoln.  New Lincoln.  Brand new.  He was likely about 25 years old but carried the polish of a man twice that age.

It seemed a quick trip to the condo, and his fathers place was on the beach. Literally, you took one step off the back porch and you were on one of the prettiest beaches I remember.  It was a two story condo, with a kitchen, bathroom, dining room, servants quarters, and a tv room on the first floor, and on the second floor there was four bedrooms and four bathrooms, and each place had a window with a waterfront place to kick back and chill.

The palms were thick, the water was a magical blue color, the sand was white as could be and the ocean moved constantly in towards the place and out again.  La Marina was just a couple of hundred yards over from the condo, and it was beautiful in its own right.  I think it is very important to discuss the heat involved, because there was heat.  Mucho mas heat.  In fact it felt right on the edge of being just plain boiling heat.  It mattered little what shirt you put on, within seconds, not minutes, the shirt was set from sweat, your hair (yes I had hair) was wet, and you swore that the day was made to cause you mucho griefio throughout.

There was business.  Enough said.   Took the better part of a day and a half and let the rest of the time rather melt into one great big puddle of fun and relaxation.  Any way I was letting time get the best of me, writing all this stuff down, and then realized the true fun of it all.  The Food.

There was water breaking high and hard at the marina entrance.  This meant that there was waves reaching in excess of thirty feet at their peak and dipping to the earth at their minimum. There had been no days like these in all the time the Navarro's had been here.  There were no boats going out and none coming in.  The marina had looked like a wedding thrown on Wednesday night when the courthouse was closed.  There were no people around.  It was sunny, beautiful outside, but the earth had decided to spill it's guts and cause waves to come in...and that was when Rogelio Sr. decided:  It looked fine.  He said this in Spanish, which Dave or I, neither one of us understood, and Rogelio Jr. told us to take off our foot gear (shows) leave them on the dock (nobody had ever been on his fathers 39' boat with shoes on) and he fired up the boat, and made a slow path to the gate, where the Pacific ocean slid between to rocky shorelines of the marina.

When the water appeared to level out, Senior hit the gas on the boat, we took a quick path out, feeling the bow of the boat lifting and lifting, none of us could see the banks, the water, nothing but the instrument panel and the bow of the boat was in the view finder of four innocent (well sort of) guys, with the gas applied full forward, and we broke the top of the wave, and could see the bottom of the ocean charging up the incline to meet us, and the bow of the boat came pointing down, down, down.

It became that moment of solitude when one figures out that the rest of their life may be a few seconds away, you can hear the motor running, you can see a large fish at it swims across the wave in front of you, and you feel the entire earth, moving upward to capture you and take you away.....and then...the ocean water filled the void, the motor made a large charging sound, and the n ext thing we knew, we could see nothing but the bow of the boat again.  It was the stomach turning ride of a life time, rather like riding on Zingo the great Bells Amusement Park roller coaster, time and time and time again....

Just as suddenly as it began, it stopped, the boat moved forward, and the ocean seemed to succumb to our boats will.  Right off the point about a mile or so out was Ixtapa-Zihuatenejo islands.