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Chapter 1My boys and I, Thomas, 3 and Cameron, 1, had been living in a small town on the Baja Peninsula for the winter. I made friends with a handsome Mexico City architect who had come to our town for a vacation. After he left, we stayed in touch and at his urging, the kids and I flew to Mexico City to visit and stay with him. The relationship did not work out and I couldn’t wait to get off the plane from Mexico City and be back on the Baja Peninsula. Flying into Loreto is always a treat. You can see the whole long thin peninsula from the air, with beautiful bright and remote beaches, lining up one after another down the deep blue coast.
The bus from the Loreto aeropuerto took us to the Hotel La Pinta, north of town on the beach. This was the early 80's, long before any fancy hotels or even a good road down Baja existed. The La Pinta, the largest hotel on the beach was only 2 stories high. When we first came down we stayed in the new part, with beautiful large rooms and balconies looking out on the Sea of Cortez, where the sunrise was spectacular. Long before we left for Mexico City though, we had moved into a rent by the month room in the older section of the hotel with Nancy. Oh, Nancy. Nancy was an American. She had a room because she was the girlfriend of the assistant manager of the hotel. We had taken up as friends not long after I arrived and she had become like a sister to me and an aunt to the boys by the time I went to Mexico City. She said she was 20, I guessed 17 max.
When the bus pulled into the parking lot of the hotel, my old Volvo station wagon had never looked so good sitting there right where we had left it. My car back, my life back, just one small problem, I had no money. Zero. Too proud to take any money from Augustine before I left, I was already regretting that. I knew we would eat and that we had a room so I would worry about money later. Meanwhile I was looking forward to seeing Nancy. She wasn’t around and the rumor was that she and Hernando had gotten into a huge fight while I was gone. They even, no one is quite sure how, broke the front window out of the hotel jeep.
The boys had fallen fast asleep in our room and I was just starting to relax, when I heard loud voices in the hall, no they weren’t loud voices they were screaming voices, I ran out into the hallway to find the manager’s Mexican wife threatening Nancy in no uncertain terms - “No mas amigas, tu no hay mi amiga, tu puta! tu puta mala!” I headed back to our room and arrive just as Nancy runs in and slams the door. “Bitch,” she yells. “She found out I was sleeping with her husband.” “You slept with the manager! Oh no I groan”, no mas amigas – would mean no more room! Damn how untimely. We needed to leave pronto; this woman was not going to let a heavy wooden door stand between her and la puta. We grabbed our stuff, thankfully not unpacked yet, woke up the boys and slipped out the sliding glass door to the deck, glad we were on the first floor. She slept with the manager! I couldn’t believe it. We got to the Volvo, threw our stuff in and looked at each other. There was really only one place to go after that and that was to find Hernando, broken jeep window or no. Thomas wondered out loud why that woman was running after us as we drove, rather fast, back out of the parking lot. And why, he wanted to know, were we leaving, we just got there. Smart, only 3 and already really smart.
Hernando was a handsome young Mexican man who spoke English and was one of the first to see the potential for catering to the gringos from across the border that were starting to come farther down the Baja and more regular every year. First it was just the fly-ins for deep sea fishing, then the hippies camping on the beach and finally, much later, it became a tourist destination and RV haven. Now it is full of vacation homes for the wealthy.
As well as being the assistant manager of our hotel, Hernando was working at one of those fancy restaurants south of Loreto in one of the first tourist developments. It was a beautiful restaurant. A huge palaypa, with a brick and stone bar, lots of colorful bougainvillea and a mariachi band. Hernando saw us and came straight over. He understood the gravity of the situation right away, he handed me a US $100 bill and asked me to take Nancy with me to the US border. Two things struck me, first, we were halfway down this remote peninsula and this waiter had a US $100 bill and second thing that struck me was that he wanted to be rid of the responsibility of Nancy that bad. I didn’t give him a chance to think about it, we left that night. For an instant I saw the future of Baja in that bill.
Music blaring, kids asleep again peacefully in the back and Nancy and I enjoying the way the evening cools down on the road with all the windows rolled down, heading north. Baja was hot that time of year. I mean hot. No one goes to the beach. If you do go out to the beach, you fry before you get to the water, and once there the water is tepid and you swelter crossing the sand back to the car. No, driving at night and lounging by a pool all day, was the only way to make it to the border that time of year. We had heard that one should never drive at night in Mexico, which we found sure made the roads a lot less crowed.
We talked about the unfortunate hotel manager and his wife for the first few miles. We talked about the impossibility of actually making it to the border with only a hundred dollars and we agreed finally that we were both actually glad to be going back to the states, lit a cigarette and tried to find something on the radio.
It had been quiet for awhile, just taking in the desert air, when Nancy asked, “Tell me about Mexico City and that handsome man you went to see.” I had to think for a minute how to explain him to Nancy. Augustine was the kind of man who did everything correctly on the outside but had a huge ego and a very small being on the inside. He wanted an outer American blue-eyed woman, yet he thought she had the inner make-up of a Mexican woman. It’s funny how many men are attracted to strong women and then just want to control them.
“He loved that I didn’t wear a bra,” I told her. He said it was so sexy and that by time he got a Mexican bra off he was un-aroused, bras and girdles and layers and hiding, so Mexican and so Catholic he said. He loved to touch my breasts and take me into his room and take my dress off slowly and gently. I didn’t wear panties once and he moaned wonderfully when he lifted my dress. “Sounds great,” said Nancy, “so when are you are going back?” “No it’s over, sweet, sour and over. He was so incredibly arrogant. You know he wouldn’t even let my kids eat in the same room with us. They ate first in the kitchen and then we were served in the dining room. He did have a great cook though and that part was cool, we could order anything we wanted from the kitchen, fresh juice, malts, taquitos, whatever and have it brought anywhere in the house, anytime.”
The house, the house was incredible, well he was an architect. In the first room, sort of a large stone foyer was his Mayan and Aztec pre-Colombian art collection. I asked him if it was illegal to have this stuff in his house, “Nothing is illegal in Mexico,” was his answer. Next you see the huge stone stairway, castle like, going to the second floor. To the right of the stairway is the main floor, which had a large living area, a dining area that was raised a half floor, a library, kitchen, maids rooms and outdoor washing area. My favorite part was the upstairs, where I had my own room with the boys, next door to Augustine’s. It was so different than any other room I had ever stayed it. It was large and dark and cool, with a small outside courtyard glassed in that filled the middle and was full of plants. The bathroom was so cool, it was a huge grotto. A large shallow pool under the shower became a swimming pool where the boys spent many happy hours in the heat of the day. The bath was filled with skylights and beautiful mosaic tile. His bathroom was even better, and taking showers together was wonderfully erotic in the sultry heat of a Mexico City evening.
I told Nancy how I loved Mexico City. I had been there once on my first trip to Mexico. I loved it then, but how much more fun it was to see it with Augustine. He had a driver and that alone was lovely. We had lunch in the Zona Rosa and walked in Chulaptapec Park. He walked me way to the back of the park to see a statue of Cortez, with his native wife and their child. It was obviously not in a permanent place, still half tied on a trailer sort of tilted on its side. “No one wants a statue of Cortez in Mexico,” he said, and went on to say that there were no statues of him in the whole country. “I can see why,” Nancy said, “and they probably aren’t too keen on her either.”
“Did you get to see your friend, what’s her name?” Nancy asked. “Carmen? “Oh yea, I can’t believe I got to Morelia,” I told her. Augustine had a lot of work to finish before we took our trip to Valle de Bravo, the town in which he had built an ashram for his Indian guru. He had been anxious for me to see it. I took the bus with the boys to Morelia and we were to met in Valle in a few days. I digressed and told Nancy the wonderful story about Carmen’s mother being a Mexican catholic nun for 15 years and her father an American priest of 20 some years and how they met at a religious retreat in Mexico. Six children later, the rest is history. I met Carmen in Marin County last winter when I was living there.
Though Carmen’s family was extremely gracious, it was uncomfortable there due to the presence of the two very old women living upstairs. One was Carman’s great-grand-mother and the other was her great-aunt. These were very old woman, bedridden until night, at which time they wandered around the house alternating between screaming and moaning. Carmen’s mother was beside herself, this had been going on for years. Later I heard that Senior Blum, Carmen’s father, had a talk with them soon after we had left and told them that it was okay to die. Okay to die, what a wonderful concept. The story goes that they slept in peace and died soon after, within hours of each other. I love that story.
I could only stay a few days and it turned out that Carmen herself was leaving Morelia on the day I was. She was going to Mexico City with friends. She wouldn’t take me even part way to Valle, where I was to meet Augustine, which was on her way. At the time I thought it was really odd, she was very apologetic, but “it was too dangerous,” she said, “You have the little boys and there are many accidents on these mountain roads in Mexico.” Now I feel that she or someone in her family foresaw that Thomas would die in a car accident on mountain roads, though not, it turned out, in Mexico and not for a few more months.
I told Nancy that the bus ride from Morelia to Valle was grueling. Everything you ever heard about a Mexican third class bus is true, I said. Seats, aisles and roof were packed to the maximum possible. There were crying babies and noisy chickens, loud music and bad smells. Two pigs, a few dogs and the bus stopped at every street in every small town, and as we crossed back into the mountains, there were lots of small towns. We got into Valle about 5 PM after taking all day to travel 200 miles, it was the appointed meeting time, no Augustine. The place we were to met turned out to be a fancy health food vegetarian restaurant that I couldn’t even afford. I had just traveled through a different Mexico, the boys and I looked rough, like we were living on the street. All these people were wealthy Mexican’s and American’s from Mexico City, Taxco and Curnevacua. Luckily when we went upstairs to find a bathroom, I found several empty rooms. I snuck the kids and our bags into one and gently closed the door. I made a nice bed and soon we were all sleeping. Much later that evening Augustine, the driver and his maid showed up. He was a jerk but I sure was glad to see him.
Valle in Spanish means valley. Valle de Bravo is an incredibly beautiful high mountain valley and canyon. The place he had built was striking! His guru could be proud. There was a main building with an apartment on top for Augustine and a few other buildings. I got one of the small houses for the boys and me. They were all lavishly furnished with wood and hand woven rugs and bright fabrics. There were large carved masks of the jaguar and paintings and prints by many Mexican artists. The view from the property across the canyon and lake was breathtaking, we took many walks and it was a lovely time. We spent several days there before driving back to Mexico City. It was a Mexico I had never seen before.
What had been a grueling bus ride out of the city was a few hour easy drive back in. Maria the maid and Lupe the cook sat in the backseat with the kids and me and sang nursery rhymes in Spanish. As we headed down into the Valley of Mexico they broke out into old patriotic songs of the revolution, Augustine and the driver included. It was a most memorable and alive time.
“So,” Nancy said as she lit our last cigarette, “where’s the sour? It all sounds pretty good so far, and you would have said if he had a little one,” and she made that gesture with her little finger that had us both laughing. “No actually, I said, that was definitely not a problem. The problem was cultural. My friends were Maria and Lupe, the cook and the maid. I hung with them, practiced my Spanish with them and our children played together. It was Mother’s day and a Sunday and I announced that Maria and Lupe and the kids and I were going to the park for ice-cream.” “No you are not,” Augustine said. “Por que,” I said. He told me that I was not to be seen outside of the house with the Help in a social situation. I guess I just stared blankly for a moment because he repeated himself. I said that in my county it is perfectly fine; he said we are here in Mexico and if I went out with the maids, to not come back. He seemed to be wearing some social bra that I was unable to take off. We went out for ice-cream and I planned my departure.
Nancy said she was glad I was back and suggested that we stop in Guerro Negro because she knew the manager of the La Pinta Hotel there. She said she had gone to a big meeting with Hernando in Ensenada and all of the La Pinta and El Presidente hotel managers and assistant managers for all of Baja were there. La Pinta and El Presidente were the Mexican government’s original chain of hotels in Baja and they were the first and in many places, still the only hotel. The manager in Guerro Negro was so glad to see her that he gave her a room and her friend - me, and the kids our own room. We had a great dinner that night on the house and all our meals for 3 more days. We swam in the pool, we swam in the ocean, we walked on the beach, made gigantic sandcastles and totally enjoyed ourselves.
When we left and were a few miles down the road, she told me that she had slept with the manager and then went on to tell me that she had slept with all the managers of the whole La Pinta chain at that Ensenada meeting. I let this sink in – it was not my first thought but I soon realized; making it to the border was actually starting to look possible.
The bus from the Loreto aeropuerto took us to the Hotel La Pinta, north of town on the beach. This was the early 80's, long before any fancy hotels or even a good road down Baja existed. The La Pinta, the largest hotel on the beach was only 2 stories high. When we first came down we stayed in the new part, with beautiful large rooms and balconies looking out on the Sea of Cortez, where the sunrise was spectacular. Long before we left for Mexico City though, we had moved into a rent by the month room in the older section of the hotel with Nancy. Oh, Nancy. Nancy was an American. She had a room because she was the girlfriend of the assistant manager of the hotel. We had taken up as friends not long after I arrived and she had become like a sister to me and an aunt to the boys by the time I went to Mexico City. She said she was 20, I guessed 17 max.
When the bus pulled into the parking lot of the hotel, my old Volvo station wagon had never looked so good sitting there right where we had left it. My car back, my life back, just one small problem, I had no money. Zero. Too proud to take any money from Augustine before I left, I was already regretting that. I knew we would eat and that we had a room so I would worry about money later. Meanwhile I was looking forward to seeing Nancy. She wasn’t around and the rumor was that she and Hernando had gotten into a huge fight while I was gone. They even, no one is quite sure how, broke the front window out of the hotel jeep.
The boys had fallen fast asleep in our room and I was just starting to relax, when I heard loud voices in the hall, no they weren’t loud voices they were screaming voices, I ran out into the hallway to find the manager’s Mexican wife threatening Nancy in no uncertain terms - “No mas amigas, tu no hay mi amiga, tu puta! tu puta mala!” I headed back to our room and arrive just as Nancy runs in and slams the door. “Bitch,” she yells. “She found out I was sleeping with her husband.” “You slept with the manager! Oh no I groan”, no mas amigas – would mean no more room! Damn how untimely. We needed to leave pronto; this woman was not going to let a heavy wooden door stand between her and la puta. We grabbed our stuff, thankfully not unpacked yet, woke up the boys and slipped out the sliding glass door to the deck, glad we were on the first floor. She slept with the manager! I couldn’t believe it. We got to the Volvo, threw our stuff in and looked at each other. There was really only one place to go after that and that was to find Hernando, broken jeep window or no. Thomas wondered out loud why that woman was running after us as we drove, rather fast, back out of the parking lot. And why, he wanted to know, were we leaving, we just got there. Smart, only 3 and already really smart.
Hernando was a handsome young Mexican man who spoke English and was one of the first to see the potential for catering to the gringos from across the border that were starting to come farther down the Baja and more regular every year. First it was just the fly-ins for deep sea fishing, then the hippies camping on the beach and finally, much later, it became a tourist destination and RV haven. Now it is full of vacation homes for the wealthy.
As well as being the assistant manager of our hotel, Hernando was working at one of those fancy restaurants south of Loreto in one of the first tourist developments. It was a beautiful restaurant. A huge palaypa, with a brick and stone bar, lots of colorful bougainvillea and a mariachi band. Hernando saw us and came straight over. He understood the gravity of the situation right away, he handed me a US $100 bill and asked me to take Nancy with me to the US border. Two things struck me, first, we were halfway down this remote peninsula and this waiter had a US $100 bill and second thing that struck me was that he wanted to be rid of the responsibility of Nancy that bad. I didn’t give him a chance to think about it, we left that night. For an instant I saw the future of Baja in that bill.
Music blaring, kids asleep again peacefully in the back and Nancy and I enjoying the way the evening cools down on the road with all the windows rolled down, heading north. Baja was hot that time of year. I mean hot. No one goes to the beach. If you do go out to the beach, you fry before you get to the water, and once there the water is tepid and you swelter crossing the sand back to the car. No, driving at night and lounging by a pool all day, was the only way to make it to the border that time of year. We had heard that one should never drive at night in Mexico, which we found sure made the roads a lot less crowed.
We talked about the unfortunate hotel manager and his wife for the first few miles. We talked about the impossibility of actually making it to the border with only a hundred dollars and we agreed finally that we were both actually glad to be going back to the states, lit a cigarette and tried to find something on the radio.
It had been quiet for awhile, just taking in the desert air, when Nancy asked, “Tell me about Mexico City and that handsome man you went to see.” I had to think for a minute how to explain him to Nancy. Augustine was the kind of man who did everything correctly on the outside but had a huge ego and a very small being on the inside. He wanted an outer American blue-eyed woman, yet he thought she had the inner make-up of a Mexican woman. It’s funny how many men are attracted to strong women and then just want to control them.
“He loved that I didn’t wear a bra,” I told her. He said it was so sexy and that by time he got a Mexican bra off he was un-aroused, bras and girdles and layers and hiding, so Mexican and so Catholic he said. He loved to touch my breasts and take me into his room and take my dress off slowly and gently. I didn’t wear panties once and he moaned wonderfully when he lifted my dress. “Sounds great,” said Nancy, “so when are you are going back?” “No it’s over, sweet, sour and over. He was so incredibly arrogant. You know he wouldn’t even let my kids eat in the same room with us. They ate first in the kitchen and then we were served in the dining room. He did have a great cook though and that part was cool, we could order anything we wanted from the kitchen, fresh juice, malts, taquitos, whatever and have it brought anywhere in the house, anytime.”
The house, the house was incredible, well he was an architect. In the first room, sort of a large stone foyer was his Mayan and Aztec pre-Colombian art collection. I asked him if it was illegal to have this stuff in his house, “Nothing is illegal in Mexico,” was his answer. Next you see the huge stone stairway, castle like, going to the second floor. To the right of the stairway is the main floor, which had a large living area, a dining area that was raised a half floor, a library, kitchen, maids rooms and outdoor washing area. My favorite part was the upstairs, where I had my own room with the boys, next door to Augustine’s. It was so different than any other room I had ever stayed it. It was large and dark and cool, with a small outside courtyard glassed in that filled the middle and was full of plants. The bathroom was so cool, it was a huge grotto. A large shallow pool under the shower became a swimming pool where the boys spent many happy hours in the heat of the day. The bath was filled with skylights and beautiful mosaic tile. His bathroom was even better, and taking showers together was wonderfully erotic in the sultry heat of a Mexico City evening.
I told Nancy how I loved Mexico City. I had been there once on my first trip to Mexico. I loved it then, but how much more fun it was to see it with Augustine. He had a driver and that alone was lovely. We had lunch in the Zona Rosa and walked in Chulaptapec Park. He walked me way to the back of the park to see a statue of Cortez, with his native wife and their child. It was obviously not in a permanent place, still half tied on a trailer sort of tilted on its side. “No one wants a statue of Cortez in Mexico,” he said, and went on to say that there were no statues of him in the whole country. “I can see why,” Nancy said, “and they probably aren’t too keen on her either.”
“Did you get to see your friend, what’s her name?” Nancy asked. “Carmen? “Oh yea, I can’t believe I got to Morelia,” I told her. Augustine had a lot of work to finish before we took our trip to Valle de Bravo, the town in which he had built an ashram for his Indian guru. He had been anxious for me to see it. I took the bus with the boys to Morelia and we were to met in Valle in a few days. I digressed and told Nancy the wonderful story about Carmen’s mother being a Mexican catholic nun for 15 years and her father an American priest of 20 some years and how they met at a religious retreat in Mexico. Six children later, the rest is history. I met Carmen in Marin County last winter when I was living there.
Though Carmen’s family was extremely gracious, it was uncomfortable there due to the presence of the two very old women living upstairs. One was Carman’s great-grand-mother and the other was her great-aunt. These were very old woman, bedridden until night, at which time they wandered around the house alternating between screaming and moaning. Carmen’s mother was beside herself, this had been going on for years. Later I heard that Senior Blum, Carmen’s father, had a talk with them soon after we had left and told them that it was okay to die. Okay to die, what a wonderful concept. The story goes that they slept in peace and died soon after, within hours of each other. I love that story.
I could only stay a few days and it turned out that Carmen herself was leaving Morelia on the day I was. She was going to Mexico City with friends. She wouldn’t take me even part way to Valle, where I was to meet Augustine, which was on her way. At the time I thought it was really odd, she was very apologetic, but “it was too dangerous,” she said, “You have the little boys and there are many accidents on these mountain roads in Mexico.” Now I feel that she or someone in her family foresaw that Thomas would die in a car accident on mountain roads, though not, it turned out, in Mexico and not for a few more months.
I told Nancy that the bus ride from Morelia to Valle was grueling. Everything you ever heard about a Mexican third class bus is true, I said. Seats, aisles and roof were packed to the maximum possible. There were crying babies and noisy chickens, loud music and bad smells. Two pigs, a few dogs and the bus stopped at every street in every small town, and as we crossed back into the mountains, there were lots of small towns. We got into Valle about 5 PM after taking all day to travel 200 miles, it was the appointed meeting time, no Augustine. The place we were to met turned out to be a fancy health food vegetarian restaurant that I couldn’t even afford. I had just traveled through a different Mexico, the boys and I looked rough, like we were living on the street. All these people were wealthy Mexican’s and American’s from Mexico City, Taxco and Curnevacua. Luckily when we went upstairs to find a bathroom, I found several empty rooms. I snuck the kids and our bags into one and gently closed the door. I made a nice bed and soon we were all sleeping. Much later that evening Augustine, the driver and his maid showed up. He was a jerk but I sure was glad to see him.
Valle in Spanish means valley. Valle de Bravo is an incredibly beautiful high mountain valley and canyon. The place he had built was striking! His guru could be proud. There was a main building with an apartment on top for Augustine and a few other buildings. I got one of the small houses for the boys and me. They were all lavishly furnished with wood and hand woven rugs and bright fabrics. There were large carved masks of the jaguar and paintings and prints by many Mexican artists. The view from the property across the canyon and lake was breathtaking, we took many walks and it was a lovely time. We spent several days there before driving back to Mexico City. It was a Mexico I had never seen before.
What had been a grueling bus ride out of the city was a few hour easy drive back in. Maria the maid and Lupe the cook sat in the backseat with the kids and me and sang nursery rhymes in Spanish. As we headed down into the Valley of Mexico they broke out into old patriotic songs of the revolution, Augustine and the driver included. It was a most memorable and alive time.
“So,” Nancy said as she lit our last cigarette, “where’s the sour? It all sounds pretty good so far, and you would have said if he had a little one,” and she made that gesture with her little finger that had us both laughing. “No actually, I said, that was definitely not a problem. The problem was cultural. My friends were Maria and Lupe, the cook and the maid. I hung with them, practiced my Spanish with them and our children played together. It was Mother’s day and a Sunday and I announced that Maria and Lupe and the kids and I were going to the park for ice-cream.” “No you are not,” Augustine said. “Por que,” I said. He told me that I was not to be seen outside of the house with the Help in a social situation. I guess I just stared blankly for a moment because he repeated himself. I said that in my county it is perfectly fine; he said we are here in Mexico and if I went out with the maids, to not come back. He seemed to be wearing some social bra that I was unable to take off. We went out for ice-cream and I planned my departure.
Nancy said she was glad I was back and suggested that we stop in Guerro Negro because she knew the manager of the La Pinta Hotel there. She said she had gone to a big meeting with Hernando in Ensenada and all of the La Pinta and El Presidente hotel managers and assistant managers for all of Baja were there. La Pinta and El Presidente were the Mexican government’s original chain of hotels in Baja and they were the first and in many places, still the only hotel. The manager in Guerro Negro was so glad to see her that he gave her a room and her friend - me, and the kids our own room. We had a great dinner that night on the house and all our meals for 3 more days. We swam in the pool, we swam in the ocean, we walked on the beach, made gigantic sandcastles and totally enjoyed ourselves.
When we left and were a few miles down the road, she told me that she had slept with the manager and then went on to tell me that she had slept with all the managers of the whole La Pinta chain at that Ensenada meeting. I let this sink in – it was not my first thought but I soon realized; making it to the border was actually starting to look possible.
1 comment:
What a life you've led! Keep writing.
Love, Mary
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