Great Beauties

Ana Rosa along with her sister Irma are two of the great beauties of Yelapa. Ana Rosa is married to Ronco and have several children now grown up. I remember her as always smiling and happy and she was friendly and nice to me, too, although I probably had more of a relationship with her sister Irma in the early days of my Yelapa adventures.

One year Irma, who is married to Angel, decided to open a little hamburger place along the path in town below her house just past Eliadoro's Cantina. It was right below where their apartments are now. That year I brought vintage jewelry to try and sell. I had been part of an antique collective in the early 80's in Santa Cruz.  I set up a little stand at her “fast food” place along the trail and she sold jewelry for me. One day she came to my palapa and handed me about $70 dollars which was my share of our enterprise. I was shocked that we earned so much. Even girls in Yelapa liked the rhinestone glitz! I gave her my portion of money to put toward the youngest daughter Jasmin's education. She lives in San Jose now.

We were always connected after our negocio and then Angel came to Santa Cruz to find work along with his brother-in-law Ronco. I tried to teach them some English and over the years they became very skilled stone masons working on some beautiful homes and businesses in my town. You can see this great work at the Shadowbrook Restaurant in Capitola and Angel's sons are still here doing excellent work with their own company.

Ronco put the stone in for my fireplace so many years ago and recently I watched him put up a new wall in Yelapa...still an excellent craftsman.

That's Mary Ann in the photo, too.

Pesos?

If you've spent even a minute on the main beach you have probably met this woman. She wanders around with her palm extended and a gap-toothed grin. Some people think she is from a wealthy family and just likes to beg for pesos. However, I think she is somewhat poor and really needs some extra money. I think her family is a little embarrassed by her constant begging and maybe ignores her needs. I don't really know. Her name is Agripina (please correct me on this if I'm wrong) and she looks exactly the same just add 30 years on to this photo. Sometimes she wanders out to the point and I can hear her shouting from the path at the top of the gate. She is persistent and along with pesos is always looking for some type of handout. She's friendly and seems to have a good sense of humor through it all. Agripina wants a hug just like the rest of us! If you have more information about her, please email me.

True Blue

When I showed up in Yelapa in 1977, I was a mess. I'd been going through separating from my husband of 10 years. Along with that, I'd been dabbling in pharmaceuticals that left me too thin and too crazy. Yelapa saved my life. The most wonderful part was the new friends I made that didn't judge me, condemn me, or lecture me. I met many unusual characters there that first winter and some are still my closest friends today. I was healed in the tropics and I still feel very safe there. I can just be myself in Yelapa.

One of these kookie characters was MaryAnn Day from Ketchikan, Alaska. MaryAnn was really an easterner with a heavy accent and strong opinions. She was a beautiful buxom blonde that didn't take shit from anybody. She worked on a ship as a burser and came to Mexico to relax every winter. MaryAnn had a younger boyfriend with curly hair and he was part of the pubheads consisting of me, him, and my sister Cris. Cris is a Canadian of Italian descent and had been travelling with a girlfriend Catherine all around Mexico. She was 10 years younger than me, but we hit it off at once and have been friends for life. We pretended we were sisters with the same father and that we coincidentally found each other in Yelapa. We had quite a story about our heritage. Since we both had dark curly hair and I could pass for Italian it didn't seem that far-fetched. 

Cris was quite the little actress and over the years we pretended we were exotic dancers, French girls, hookers, and many other fantasy characters. Once in Victoria, we went to a bar where her husband was meeting with his running team for a round of drinks. We dressed very provacatively and sat at a table near them. He pretended not to know us whle we flirted and sent him drinks and notes to make the other guys jealous!. His mates never found out that was really his wife.

When we were the French girls we ordered pie at a restaurant. They asked what pieces we wanted and in our fake French accents we said we wanted ze whole blueberrry pie! The waitress finally believed us and brought us a pie and Cris dug right into the middle of it as if that were the most natural thing in the world. Another time we pretended we were hookers on the street in Gas Town in Vancouver, but we realized people were taking us a little too seriously and we were afraid we were going to get arrested and hauled down to jail. We cut that ruse short. I still think of her as my other little sister even though she's a grown woman with a family of her own now.

I met two guys that also met each other on the same day. They became lovers and are still together 30 years later! You might know them as Lalo and John, but when I first met them the dark handsome one was called Lawanda. He had long beautiful hair and a beard and was so dramatic and very creative and fun. His new boyfriend, John was blond and more athletic and a great swimmer. We spent many hours on the beach perfecting our tans and ogling all the new guys that came to the beach. The 3 of us were inseparable and spent many years in close harmony in Santa Cruz. Now they live in Mexico full time and John still swims across the Bay daily when he's in Yelapa. The stories we could tell! 

The Scorpion Incident

One day I was visiting Allen who lived at the Point in Fuller's House, which became Allen Singer's House, which now is Chrissy's House. It was a screened in house...like a summer porch in the Midwest, but on the waterfront. A scorpion appeared and I had never killed one before and knew very little about dealing with them. I just knew they meant danger.

Al proceeded to show me how to kill a scorpion. First, he got a huge kitchen chopping knife, then he cut off the tail, scooped it up onto the knife blade and proceeded to jump up on the table rather flamboyantly! He pulled out some matches lighting one and started a little fire to burn the tail in a special brass bowl. He told me this is what you have to do to kill a scorpion, chop off the tail and burn it! It was quite a little complicated ceremony! I hoped I'd never see one on my own as I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to chop off its tail so mercilessly. Some part of me really didn't believe this demonstration, but Allen had a way of convincing saps like me to believe his crazy stories. He calls it being playful!

My only other scorpion incident up to this moment was living in the little school house near Christina Woodruff. My boyfriend Josh, the White Prince of Reggae, insisted on putting it into a jar of alcohol and for several days that poor scorpion suffered at our hands. I never forgot that and vowed not to kill one unless I absolutely had to do it and no more slow torture, it had to be a quick kill of some kind. The negative energy coming off that little jar is still vivid in my mind and those that insist on putting scorpions in alcohol for medicinal purposes are being cruel in my opinion. They should at least kill them first.

The day came that I saw one crawling in my clothes on the closet shelves. I was living in Casa Cynthia then, which is now Casa Sol on the water. Old John Williams (Cynthia's dad) was my landlord and he lived in the Crow's Nest above me. That house is called Casa Estrella today. I freaked...I had no big chop knife anywhere near me at the moment. I screamed for John to help me. He ran down from the top house, pulled off his flipflop and gave the critter a hard slap killing it instantly. 

I realized Allen had punk'd me that day and, thereafter, I knew I could dispose of the next scorpion when necessary.

In the Jungle, the Quiet Jungle...

I had never slept outdoors except in a tent or cabin. Christina's lovely little palapa was OPEN to all elements of the jungle. As it started to get dark at sunset, I realized we could not see anything out there in the dark. Once candles and lamps were lit, eveything could see us! It was something to get used to for a Nebraska city girl.

Christina kept a candle going at all times. She had a little container with straw and sticks sitting near the starter candle to use as kindling for lighting the stove and lamps, so as not to waste precious matches that often were too wet. It was eerily quiet upriver with the dark surrounding us like a wooly blanket. I felt like I could poke holes in it. We seemed so vulnerable in the middle of the jungle like that, with no walls for protection. I could hear animal sounds that I did not recognize and it made me jumpy those first days there.

Barbara and Christina were somehow involved with an exotic black man that strolled the beach with a staff and white clothes. He called himself Nejemiah and said he was from Sierra Leone. Nejemiah loved attention and one way he got it was by riding a white horse along the beach. He was mysterious and loved beautiful women. It seemed to me that he often managed to get them to support him in one way or another. He had a scary vibe, a strong accent and he was beautiful to watch from a distance.

One night he told Barbara he was coming to the house to be with her even though she told him no. We all climbed up into the topanka so he would not find her alone. His energy crept all around us in the dark and we knew he was there somewhere, but we lay quietly holding hands, hoping he would not try to come upstairs. It was one of the few nights I was ever afraid in the jungle. I'm not sure what we thought could happen, but the vibe was negative and intense.

Later on that winter his younger brother arrived..Isaiah from Chicago. He was just the opposite in personality with a friendly and light way of being.  He did not have the accent of his older brother either. One day I heard them arguing when they thought they were private. Nejemiah's accent was totally gone! I thought he was a major hustler and eventually he left Yelapa. I'm sure a lot of unsuspecting women had loaned him money which was never returned. Later in life, I found some men used women that way, but this was my first experience of a bona fide hustler. Does anyone know what happened to Nejemiah?

Sailing to the Old World

The tourist boat was a crowded rocking party...literally; loud music, drinking, dancing and carousing and me green around the gills. It took 3 hours to get there! I almost died as an infant crossing the Atlantic Ocean on a ship, so I was hanging on with bare white knuckles. I needed to get off that boat soon!

I will never forget my first glimpse of Yelapa from the Sombrero deck as we came around the last rocky point. I later learned that rock was affectionately called shit rock because Pelicans perch on it and did what I had been doing for 3 weeks at the Hotel Marsol. It was surreal and not unlike how I felt many years later when I first saw Venice, Italy from the water; beautiful, exotic and strange all at the same time, more like a dream than reality.

I was still mareado from the boat ride when we had to step down into wooden canoas and get rowed to shore in small groups. Having lived on flat land my entire life, jumping in and out of these canoes was anything but easy. I simply did not understand moving objects on waves. The first time I visited Santa Monica, CA as an adult, I went to the ocean's edge and tried to stand in a little wave. It knocked me over. Between Yelapa and Santa Cruz, I get it now, but, then it was all very foreign and the power of the ocean was alarming. The truth is I was ready to jump into the ocean and swim just to get off that pitching boat, so, I was more than happy to leap into the dugout and head for shore. Of course, it wasn't that simple...the boatman needed to time the olas and try to get us in without swamping the boat. I would find that challenge very entertaining months later when I no longer considered myself a turista. My Spanish vocabulary increased moment by moment.

My friend Barbara and her young son Todd and I were to stay at Christina Woodruf's palapa upriver. That was to be my first landing and home in Yelapa. I recall looking across the full lagoon bewildered and wondering how was I going to get across this body of water. It was the most primitive place I'd ever seen. It was hot and sultry and the lagoon was deep and we needed to cross it.

Several small young boys approached us and offered to help us for some pesos. They took our packs and put them into a tiny canoa banked at the river mouth and motioned for us to follow or get in, I don't recall now. Those enterprising boys were Javier, Jorge and Juaquin Rodriguez! The biggest handled the money and split half between the other two brothers! He was very much in control of the situation and an aspiring capitalist. Today Juaquin runs Jack's Taxi (boat) Service and the other brothers are well known Yelapa entrepreneurs with rental apartments and other negocios of their own.

Trapped at the Hotel Marsol

My body is aging while my heart stays young...one forgets how you may look to others without a mirror or window in Yelapa. Sometimes, I think I am still that bubbly young woman from the past when I scamper across the rocks full of energy, but when I catch a reflection of myself, I am stunned! Who is that strange wrinkled woman looking at me so intensely? I know I'm not on acid....so, it's something more insidious. An imposter has taken over my body! My own Night of the Living Dead!

I try to remember how I felt 30 years ago when I first landed in Mexico. I was newly separated from my husband of 10 years and pretty spunout. Nevertheless, I was a fully formed human. My mind had been made up about things. I thought I knew and had felt everything. I was in for a big surprise! Soon I would meet someone from Yelapa that would help jumpstart me on a woogie path of change. Goodby Toto, Goodby Kansas or in my case...Goodby Nebraska.

I came directly to PV from the flatlands where I had lived since the age of 3. It was 12 degrees below 0 when I left Lincoln in leathers and hightop boots. I had never been to Mexico and when I exited the plane in PV it was 88 degrees. I was stunned by the heat. It only took a couple days in PV for me to sink to new lows as I got hit by the wall of Montezuma's Revenge! I was chained to the Marsol Hotel for 3 weeks solid. Unable to move. Weak. Smelly. Not charming.

It was in this horrid space that I met one of my first Yelapa characters. He reminded me of a swashbucklling pirate, or an Omar Sharif with a delicate butterfly tattooed on his shoulder. He was acquainted with my friend that had invited me to visit her in Mexico. I was there with a Nebraska boyfriend who was a talented eccentric artist, but felt out of place in Puerto Vallarta. I had loved him madly back in Omaha, but here in Mexico it didn't feel right, but that's another story.  Al came to greet us but he got more than he bargained for that day.

We still laugh about our meeting so many years later...bonded at the Marsol Hotel with stained sheets and a broken toilet. The staff reported that we broke it, but it wasn't true. We were too sick to complain about the leak. The bill cost extra for the broken john...honestly. I tried to complain but the desk clerk threatened to call the police! Was I ever naive. I paid the bill and learned 3 new Spanish words...roto, policia, and lardon!

Eventually, my body began to acclimate to Mexican biotics and I was ready to journey across the sea on the Sombrero. I didn't know I could get so seasick. I learned one more Spanish word...mareado.

Mexico; The New World

Coming back to Yelapa after more than a 10 year absence has been like experiencing an old dream with new characters. I recognize palapas although house names have been changed. I still know a palm tree or two and nod in recognition as I walk by. The rocks that are left on the paths still carry my name. I've either stubbed a toe, tripped while carrying groceries or fallen under the influence at one time or another. There aren't that many rocks on the path left that haven't been touched by new cement.

I thought I'd miss the kerosene lamps and washing my clothes by hand. I worried about TVs and extra noise now that electricity had arrived. By some enchanted miracle, progress has not ruined my beloved other home in the world. True, I hardly knew any gringos when I came back last year. New faces, new restaurants, ice cream, and home-made granola. I don't have to go to PV to get practically anything I want. Tomas brings fresh muffins. Massages are plentiful. I can even get my hair colored if I want. I want. A class for this, a group for that...there is no end of possibilities to be entertained.

I meet strangers on the trail that have come for the first time since the Sunset article. It feels like a boom town. I'm learning to love it all over again. When I returned home in early April, I found my slides from 1977-79. I spend hours scanning them into digital files to share. Yelapa seemed more quaint. Less people. We all knew each other. Funkier houses. Fewer chairs on the beach. We were the young hot bodies. 

The heart of Yelapa has kept ticking without me. The Mexicans have produced new generations. Those generations have produced more generations. The pie girls pictured are abuelas now, but still recognizable and the pie tastes just as delicious as 30 years ago.