Vallarta Journal: 3) Yelapa
Since I was the last paying customer still aboard, the water taxi revved directly toward Yelapa, ignoring such intermediary destinations as Boca de Tomatlán, Las Animas, and Quimixto. Though still planing along the south shore, we were west of that ephemeral spot where the northwest defining point of Banderas Bay, Punta Mita, protects you from southerly Pacific winds: the taxi slapped hard a few times on random swells.
Too inaccessible now for development, this rocky coastline is left to solitary or companionable brown pelicans. Above their spray-tossed perches, dense vegetation steeply covers the Sierra Madre to its cloud-torn heights and attempts to reflect the entire spectrum of green, depending on the quality of light or leaf—such as the huge, dark, serrated bread fruit or the wispy, salt-dried frond of palm.
Time over water passed immeasurably—sort of like reading time—and then the taxi veered abruptly left, behind a now apparent headland. We faced a sand cove, partly obscuring a river mouth, with some fishing boats, a few thatched palapas along the sand, and some makeshift dwellings straddling and climbing the west shore. Now that I was about to be deposited, the sole cargo, at the beach of this remote community, I began to feel distinctly foreign.
The prow of the taxi was grabbed by men who emerged from the shade of a palapa directly ahead, as I stepped down onto wave-washed sand. A middle-aged man with a Pancho Villa moustache, wearing a wide-brimmed Panama hat, led me to a shaded beach chair. I was no sooner seated and he asked if I wanted to ride horseback to the local waterfall. An older man with close-cropped gray hair and a sort of set smile joined us, offering the day’s fresh catch—a huge red snapper and a mammoth, tentacled crab. With a few gestures he let me know I had only to give the word and these could be cooked for my lunch. I ordered a coke to appease these guys and gain a moment’s peace. What to do with the few hours I’d spend in this near inaccessible corner of a bustling vacation paradise?
A short young man with a well-developed upper body in a tank top and a more experienced face now approached me. He told me in English that he’d be my guide for the day and take me on horseback to the waterfall. Renting a horse (120 pesos) would make the half-hour climb more comfortable for me, and for his guiding he charges 200 pesos. Burrito (as he introduced himself) would throw in a complementary joint. No, the police were not a factor in Yelapa, he responded to my concern. He knew everybody—was in fact related to everyone. The owner of the palapa, who had first approached me, was his uncle. I now considered that I was the victim of a vast family conspiracy for my tourist dollar, from the sagacious look on the water-taxi ticket-seller’s face at Los Muertos pier, to the captain’s steering to the section of beach in front of this palapa. Whether it was the tropic sun addling my brain or the sense that my excursion would be cheap by U.S. standards, I neglected to barter. OK, Burrito, let me finish my coke and then we’ll go to the waterfall.
In a low-lying shaded area back of the playa we found the diminutive horses stabled. Burrito had just about fitted me to a roan mare when a woman emerged to indicate a dappled-gray gelding. I paid her the fee and Burrito began leading my horse along a shady path. I somehow imagined that we’d both ride, so I felt a little silly, the old gringo, being led.
The lush tropical vegetation soon opened up to a wide, shallow tidal estuary, which we forded. The watershed upstream enables access deep into the sun-illuminated Sierra. Had I another day Burrito would take me to explore the jungle. Among the wide-bladed yellowish grasses—in the wet sands—large yellow butterflies and intricately patterned ones swirled.
As we began climbing a paved track among dwellings along the cove’s west shore, Burrito asked if I was traveling alone. I indicated that I wasn’t, but that Tina was pursuing one or another extreme sport or sunbathing in Vallarta today. Burrito said he was popular with the chicas and knew the States, having children in Minneapolis and Las Vegas, too, he thought. He had recently visited the boy in Mpls—
you know the Mall of the Americas?—but the relationship with his mother had not worked out.
Lushly draping crude brick and cement-block buildings, the vibrant colors of bougainvillea have a totally other effect here in Yelapa than they do in prim, fog-chilled San Francisco gardens. Between buildings and coco palms we’d get another over-the-shoulder perspective of the cove and sandspit. Burrito bade
Buenos Dias to passersby and a shopkeeper. Though the horse was doing all the work I was sweating! A chilled soda had been hard to come by in Yelapa nine months ago, before the low-hanging, omnipresent power line had been rigged and juiced. Burrito offered me the joint, indicating that if I wished to purchase weed or even cocaine in quantity, he had sources. I told him that I rarely smoked, but that perhaps we could try a toke at the waterfall.
I asked how so much prime bay front remained natural and undeveloped. Burrito explained that it was protected by the community, a far-flung band (now largely mestizo) of the Huichol tribe. After Burrito pointed out the small Yelapa church above us, we struck off left from the main track, switch backing sharply up between dwellings (as much out of doors as in) and now following a shaded stream. My little horse let me know before Burrito did that we had reached a steep pitch in the trail beyond which he would not go. After I dismounted, Burrito and I climbed the short distance to a crude stand for souvenirs and a now apparent palapa. We climbed several wide ledges, with tables and beach umbrellas to reach the edge of the pool.
Over a truly impressive vertical escarpment of stone and receding, vertigo-inspiring vegetation was a trickling stream. Quimixto’s fall was larger, Burrito now conceded. Nevertheless, children splashed delightedly in the fall’s deep pool. As I seemed to be today’s only visitor, I ordered a soda for each of us and we lit up. The cannabis, producing a rich smoke, wasn’t harsh and seemed to leave me largely unaffected. On the other hand, as we were seated in the shade at the waterfall’s pool, time seemed distinctly to stretch his legs.
A less-generalized attention—one I could again attribute to myself—presently was focused on the clamoring niños, now tightly packed below the vertiginous slab. Burrito said some kids we could just make out above the fall had been damming the little flow to produce a periodic, respectable downpour. Pealing his tank top, Burrito asked if I wanted to take a dip and, before I could formulate any response, plunged in. When he emerged, glistening, tattoos polished, and refreshed, his sudden awareness of time let me understand if I wanted to taste uncle’s fish, we had to begin our return trip.
As my horse picked his way down the steep track, I soon realized I had to use my knees to let him know to avoid the margins, where overhanging ledges could scrape or gash me. Burrito chatted briefly with an attractive girl hanging laundry. When we passed, he told me he’d be her man if she weren’t with his cousin. Actually, a woman from another village was living with Burrito now. At 27, he reflected, it might be time to get married.
When the fish, which I’d asked to be grilled, finally arrived, it was too large—was it multiple fish?—overcooked, and largely inedible. When I’d asked him, Burrito had said that he only used his nickname, but that his given one was Arturo.
posted by Paul at 2:22 PM
Vallarta Journal: 2. Los Arcos
The water taxi, soon planing smoothly on the almost placid bay, sped its few (four or five) passengers, arcing southwest toward Los Arcos.
Along this coast beyond Conchas Chinas, the visible escarpment of the Sierra Madre, which I'd figure at 4-6 thousand feet, plunges vertiginously to the rocky shoreline, with white-sand beaches lining the concave mouths of numerous ravines. Where still accessible by the coastal road, modern hotels (or timeshares) in white crystalline or coral stone are recent fillings for those choice settings. The pressure of development, necessarily in concert here with lush yet adamant natural features, guarantees a tasteful, high-end property. Among the rich variety of vegetation I make out graceful swaying stands of coconut palms at various elevations, and ocassional purple swaths of jacaranda.
As the offshore rocky islets of Los Arcos take up more of the view, interspersed along the coast are gold fillings of sumptuous private holdings. Though Mexican modern in architecture, these estates usually focus attention on a fantastic feature--whether a parabolic roof of Polynesian thatch or the ubiquitous Vallarta motif (Moorish?) of a domed occiput (bored and surmounted by a smaller turreted dome). As a single focus or clustered, in any proportion or color, these adorn both the shoddy, mundane edifice and the palaces of this Mexican Riviera. Only (Queen) Carlotta's iron crown, somehow uplifted by Our Lady of Guadalupe's steeple, with its glowing orb at night, is heavier.
I'm going to Yelapa, the most remote beachside community of the south shore but, it turns out, three passengers are disembarking at one of the tourist boats, composing a small Armada anchored at Los Arcos. Our captain almost cut the engine to avoid slicing/dicing the snorkelers, cast like colorful fishing nets from each party boat.
I'd thought "Los Arcos," found in our hotel name and other public features about town, derived from the pseudo-Pompeian arched ruins placed prominently on the Malecon. Yet these striking islets--jungle pyramids over exposed yellow to reddish stone down to turquoise waves lapping, where from a certain angle each reveals a stunning, see-through arch. According to Frommer's the tropical fish inhabiting these waters know better where to be when fluorescent green- and yellow-accessoried surface breathers pay their midday visits.
posted by Paul at 4:00 PM
