A Day with Friends

Today I went with my upstairs neighbor (I keep calling her my roommate – probably because of a sort of air shaft inside our apartments, we can hear everything as if we’re living in the same apartment) to visit the land she’s bought out in the country. It was truly one of my best days here.

We got into her old style Volkswagon Beetle with her dog Nerea. (Don’t know if I have that spelling right.) Nerea is a rescued Mexican street dog and apparently most Mexicans scoff at having such a dog but most foreigners comment on how cute she is (which as you can see, she is). She wanted to sit in my lap most of the way there and stick her head out the window. Along the way we stopped to look at a great waterfall off of the side of the road.


We traveled past Mismaloya which is the furthest south I’d been and only the next town over from Vallarta. Past Boca de Tomatlan, the town next to Mismaloya, another 20 minutes to the town of Los Juntos y Los Veranos. Los Juntos because 2 rivers come together (junto) there; not sure why Los Veranos. We took a left onto a little dirt road off the main highway, aways past the town. Her land is at the top of a hill and currently marked off with barbed wire. I’m bad with distance but I’d say the nearest neighbor is at least a quarter mile away and that’s a house that’s just being built. She plans to build a house there and eventually an eco-tourist hotel. Down a hill in back of her house is a river that we went wading in. The only sound you can hear is the rush of the river and some cows’ bells clanging as they graze in the distance. It’s such a beautiful, peaceful place that I can see why she’s fallen in love with it. I personally could not live out in the middle of nowhere by myself like that. And it didn’t help to hear that her neighbor had been murdered the night before (no details available about that).


We explored the town a bit because she needed to meet up with someone to pay some money. There’s a really impressive spot where the river has carved into the stone. Unfortunately I didn’t have my camera with me at that point; I’ll have to return and try to capture it on film – it’s breathtaking.

I was happy to get out of my little area of Vallarta and see such natural beauty. And also spend the day speaking and listening to Spanish. It’s even more of a challenge with her because she speaks with the Castillian “lisp”. The funny thing is that I find myself picking it up! Better not get into that habit. Ana is definitely a cool person. She’s into acupuncture (which she does to herself), healing with magnets, younger men – the less conventional things in life. I hope we hang out more because it also helped me to talk with her about some of my frustrations here and for her to reassure me that everyone goes through an adjustment period and I need to not pressure myself and that I’ve only been here such a short time.

Later tonight I hung out with Alden and our mutual friend Jack (some of you know him ;-) and spent some time in his swimming pool. I had started the day feeling like maybe when I get back to NYC in December I wouldn’t come back to Mexico. Now I feel I need to give things more of a chance.