| During an excellent breakfast with coffee and a huge fruit plate of
papaya, melon, bananas, watermelon and jicame to start, we meet one
of the other guests, who's leaving that day, a couple and their teen aged
granddaughter who have been working on a new Techo house, and are leaving
in a couple of days and Linda and Dave who are quite involved with the
Techo project and Susana's Biblioteca. The couple with the granddaughter
are staying at Casa Alicia, where we'll move to next week
The roof of Casa Pacifica seems to be a common gathering place in the morning for gringos doing work in the community. It proves to be even more in the days to come. Susana obviously has her finger on the pulse of the place, and handles meals (with the help of Chapina, the cook) and community concerns with equal ease. All very interesting .... part of why we're here is to perhaps take a small part in something like what's going on here. For the moment we just observe and get a sense of the people and situation. It is a vacation too. After breakfast we gather up a small pack and head off to the beach and to explore a little. Casa Alicia is to the immediate left in the picture. To the immediate
right are the gates to the private land and development owned by the governor
of Nayarit.
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The road to town outside of Casa Pacifica's driveway |
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Further up the road from Casa Pacifica we pass the school and biblioteca
on the left (not shown in this picture). Along the road we notice
the houses that have little business ventures operating out of their living
rooms and front patios. One has a small selection of tortillas & snacks,
some veggies and fruit, bottled water and fresh eggs, another some shelves
of canned goods, bags of rice and other staples. Casa Alicia has a fridge
full of Coca- Cola and some ice cream and offers freshly slaughtered chickens.
No need to go the three blocks to the abbarottes on the main street. The
ultimate in neighborhood shopping. Later I discover that EVERY house and
family has a unique way of being a part of the whole.
Again we get smiles and shy waves and nods from almost everyone we pass. It's nice and warm .... in both temperature and relaxed ambiance. Lots of chickens and dogs everywhere. Most of the chickens look good .... most of the dogs don't. A smiling little girl approaches with a young puppy in her arms ... tells us it's her puppy and it's name ... then skips back and deposits it in a hammock. There are smashed pangas from the hurricane in front of quite a few houses. They look bleak, but probably fixable. Later in our stay we see two fixed pangas being returned on a trailer to some very happy looking neighbors. I don't know their names, but we had nodded at each other for days. When the boats returned, there were big grins and a thumbs up as we passed. |
| We turn the corner at the school/biblioteca yard and head down the
cobbled hill into town. The school is again on the left and the church
is to the right. Just at the corner are an abandoned tortellaria
and a deposito, perhaps also victims of the hurricane and waiting to resume
business at another time.
There are no names for the streets here. there are only four or five of them anyway. We find you can walk around the entire town in about a half hour. We do that numerous times over our stay. |
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This is the open church. It looks to be newly constructed but still has remnants of some big trees taken out by the hurricane laying in the yard... there was sad evidence everywhere of many beautiful big trees broken by the force of the storm. |
| At the bottom of the cobbled hill you arrive at the main street. I
suspect that it too was cobbled before the hurricane and will be again
soon.
The building to the left is the first of the abbarottes from this end of town. Across the road from it is a new restaurant under construction. There was rubble on each side, evidence of a number of now gone buildings. Apparently there were many more palms there also. Just beyond the restaurant being constructed is a small open store selling beach wear and beyond that the white building is the first of the depositos. Beyond that the still functioning beach restaurants start. No question .... it looks rough and very beat up, but I can sense what was there and envision what will come. We love it already. |
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