Day 2 Sunday

In San Juan Cosala, Mexico

For breakfast I had the last noodle cup. I walked for an hour from the house down to the church in San Juan Cosalá and back up the steep cobblestone streets. I was breathing fast and had to stop to catch my breath. By 10:30, I was ready for a nap.

In the afternoon, I walked ten minutes down the hill and around the block, then back up the hill to the spa, Monte Coxala, to find out when Toñio and Beatriz were coming. I knew they were coming Sunday. I needed some help getting groceries and figuring out how to get to Ajijic. They finally arrived, with Beatriz’s mother, Beatriz, and I visited with them for awhile. Then Beatriz took me into Ajijic and drove me back up to the house with my groceries just in time for another nap.

I had brought gifts with me on the plane, boxes of cards and journals, for family and people who helped me. I put together gift bags for folks that I knew were at Jorge’s house -- Beatriz, Beatriz and Toñio, and Jorge and Aida. Each day the first week I tried to keep handing out gift bags. Lorenza, Karina’s sister, got one item the first week and then I gave her another gift after the yoga lessons. Also, I gave Peter and Karina a gift bag.

I knew Jorge lived next to the tennis courts at the Raquet Club. On Sunday, they had all gone to his house to play cards. So I walked down the dirt road to the cobblestones and then on the concrete sidewalks to their house -- fortunately they had invited me to visit. They were playing Canasta and Aida’s parents were also there. They offered me a sandwich and I watched them play cards. After Toñio finished playing and Aida took his place, he engaged me in conversation so I could practice my Spanish. However I didn’t understand much unless he spoke slowly. Then he was asking me questions about Becky and why she wasn’t with me. Before leaving home, I had practiced writing in Spanish what happened to Becky so I was prepared. Still the whole conversation came down to “Está enferma” -- she is sick. I was emotionally on the edge of crying but was too embarrassed to do it in front of everyone. Concerned about walking in the dark, I left and walked back to the house. I was an absurd tourist in México.

The thunder storm that night went right over the house. It was so loud I thought the cement vibrated. My Mozart and head phones didn’t block out the thunder nor did the ear plugs later. I don’t know when I finally went to sleep.

Day 1 Saturday

Day 1 Saturday
On the flight to Guadalajara, I fainted at the rear of the plane near a sleeping flight attendant while I was waiting to use the bathroom. My knees buckled, I grabbed a handrail and folded onto the corrugated aluminum floor. I heard her scream and call for help on the phone. Before the flight, I was so excited my stomach was upset so I didn’t eat for eight hours before my five hour flight. A flight attendant gave me oxygen from a big green bottle. I drank several cups of soda pop and kept telling them I had low blood sugar. After we landed, I walked off the plane, waited in line at customs, got my bags and took a half-hour taxi ride to the wrong house. At the time, I thought I was at the correct house however I had the wrong house number.

The house is in a gated community called The Raquet Club (in English: Racquet). Naïve about the people here, I imagined someone stealing my luggage. I climbed over the front gate and walked behind the locked, empty house. I climbed back out, then lifted the luggage up and over the gate into the yard and walked down the hill to Karina’s house, a cousin of my son-in-law, Alfonso.

I got a key from them but of course it didn’t work. I waited and waited. Finally, the house keeper Carmen and her son Jésus walked up the street. Carmen was talking fast in Spanish so I understood very little. She pointed up the hill and then I understood that I was at the wrong house. Jésus helped me get my bags over the gate and back on the street. We walked to the end of the street, then up another road dragging my luggage through the mud to a hill where two houses stood separate from all the others. Carmen unlocked the metal gate in the stone and concrete wall surrounding the property and unlocked the door to the house. She showed me the keys for each lock. Carmen said her “patrona” was Beatriz, Alfonso’s aunt, who would come Sunday. Carmen said her husband, Jésus, would come later to turn on the water. They left me there alone. The first of many hours I would spend alone in the next three weeks.

The house, called La Cabaña de la Curul, was about 100 yards beyond the eastern edge of the Raquet Club but officially a member of the neighborhood association. On the western side of a ridge, the house had an unobstructed view of the west end of Lake Chapala, the largest fresh water lake in Mexico. Starting due south, the 180 degree view was spectacular from the lake to the village of San Juan Cosalá and up the steep mountain slopes. Except for one weekend when it rained, I enjoyed sitting outside for the next three weeks in the afternoons watching the reflection off the lake, the sunlight on the mountains and the shadows in the many arroyos.

I walked down the road from the house to the cobblestone street. That was the last time I wore my old shoes. My new white running shoes were better for walking on the uneven stone streets. When there was one, I walked on the sidewalk. I walked to the small store near the security gate and bought gatorade, water, tortillas and some instant noodle cups. I didn’t have any hot water at the house. Not because there weren’t any matches to light the boiler but because I wasn’t thinking clearly and didn’t know where to look for the matches. Later after turning on the water, Carmen’s husband Jésus said he would come back with matches to light the boiler so I would have hot water for a shower. There were matches in the drawer.

After my walk, I took a nap for an hour. Then I sat outside on the covered terrace. Two wasps fell on the tile floor fighting near my feet. They separated and one flew up toward the ceiling. I looked up and saw a small mud nest. Later I used the broom to sweep the nest off the ceiling. One sound that was constant in the daytime outside was the loud hum of the honey bees. Their nests were in white boxes near the top of the hill to the north of the house.

For lunch, I used the coffee maker, without coffee, to make hot water to pour into the styrofoam cup with the noodles and three tiny shrimp. It had a weird fake spice taste.
About four o’clock in the afternoon, I walked down the road and around the block, and then up the hill on the cobblestone road to Monte Coxala (the spa) and was greeted by two hairless dogs (Xoloitzquintle the national dog of México). Jorge Garcia, Alfonso’s uncle, owns the spa, and acres of land nearby with three houses. I met Jorge’s current wife, Aida. Jorge said there would be a wedding at the resort the next Saturday. (Two weeks later, after the second wedding, I was thinking he tried to warn me about the noise and activity.) I asked for some matches, telling them there weren’t any at the house, which was a lie, because I had not looked closely in the drawer next to the gas stovetop.

I had successfully spoken enough Spanish my first day to make myself understood by a taxi driver, the housekeeper and her son, Jorge and Aida, the grocery store owner and others even with my American accent and slow delivery. I tried to not speak English except when I felt I needed to communicate more precisely. Sometimes they understood English better than I could understand or speak Spanish.

About 6:30 pm on my first day in México, I walked back to the house and had another noodle cup with three tiny shrimp. I had another nap. My stomach didn’t feel well, so I took a pepto pill. I listened to the bells from the church in San Juan Cosalá. I could see the steeple in the center of the village when I stood on the terrace. I watched the sun glide down the sky to the mountains at the west end of the lake. The reflection off the lake was so bright that I used a tree to block it so I could watch the sunset. I was relaxed and not nervous or anxious about my situation. (How naïve I was.)

I used the coffee maker a third time to gag down another noodle cup with three tiny shrimp. I was tired from flying all night, and walking up and down the hills. Not until the next day did I figure out that the altitude was like Denver, a mile high. That first day I heard the church bells ring, maybe ten or twelve notes each time and then each day, twice in the morning, twice about noon and then twice in the evening. Every morning a burro woke me up singing his imitation of the church bells before the first call to mass. I know he was imitating the church bells because one morning I heard him in perfect synchronization with the series of notes from the church bells.

By 8 o’clock the sun had set behind the mountains and everything was dark and quiet for a few minutes, until the live music from the village started with electric guitars, drums, accordions and singing. Alfonso had warned me to take ear plugs. I used them that first night and several other nights. That first night there was a loud thunder storm right over the house and the rain continued until after I was asleep.

Every night for the first hour in bed, I would listen to Mozart on my personal CD player using full-sized headphones. By then the live music had stopped and the thunder storms quieted down, though the rain continued until after I had gone to sleep. After sunset, on nights when there wasn’t rain, the crickets sang me to sleep if I didn’t use my ear plugs.

The house had no central heat because of the mild climate. The daytime high temperature was usually about 80 degrees, and averaged rainfall for October was 2 inches. But this October was different. There was much more rain and it was cold at night in the house. Built with tile, concrete and brick the house stays cool in the daytime. To stay warm at night, I had to use two blankets, socks, warm-up pants, and a cotton short-sleeve t-shirt under a long-sleeved nylon t-shirt. This must have been a record rainfall for October because one Sunday it rained all day. Something the locals said they had never experienced.

On my first day in México: I passed out on the plane, didn’t go to the right house, didn’t have enough good food, walked in the mud and on cobblestones, stressed my knees hiking up and down the steep slopes, the thunderstorms and music woke me up at night, the roosters and burro woke me up before dawn, and combined with the mile high altitude, made me so tired I slept 10 hours after two naps. Go ahead laugh. I was an absurd tourist in México for the next three weeks.

The Plan

My plan was to travel to Mexico and stay for three weeks. Alone. Without a car. In a house south of Guadalajara on the north shore of Lake Chapala. I was an absurd tourist in Mexico. Here is my story.